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The Road To Dumbiedykes 



The Road 
To Dumbiedykes 

Some Rambling Thoughts 
of One Who Found It 



By 

Alvin Howard Sanders 

Editor "The Breeder's Gazette" 

Author of "The Story of The Herefords," "At the 

Sign of the Stock Yard Inn," etc. 




Chicago 

Sanders Publishing Company 

1916 



;6?>'^ 






Copyright, 1 91 6 

Sanders Publishing Company 

All Rights Reserved 



JUL 10 1916 



>CI.A431798 



To "Billy" 



A PIECE of land not very large, 
Wherein there shall a garden be, 
A clear spring flowing ceaselessly. 
And where to crown the whole there should 
A patch he found of growing wood. 

— Horace. 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Boy and a Dog ... 9 
II. A Brick House with a Past 21 

III. "The Heart of Midlo- 

thian" 29 

IV. The Bluegrass Claims its 

Own 39 

V. Midsummer Night Alarms 55 
VI. The Coming of the Dawn . 65 

VII. Dumb Walls 81 

VIII. The Garden Gate ... 89 
IX. The Tragedy of the Fly- 
ing Squirrels .... 99 
X. Toilers and Idlers of the 

Shining Hours . . .113 

XI. The Rain upon the Roof . 123 

XII. Fireside Fancies . 129 

XIII. The Beginnings of To-mor- 

row 139 

XIV. Back to the Bright Lights 145 



7] 




The Road to Dumbiedykes 

CHAPTER I 
A Boy and a Dog 

The keeping of Collies, Fox Terriers 
and in fact most other kinds of dogs 
in cities is a crime. I speak of course 
of real dogs, not those poor degenerates 
you may see in my lady's limousine or 
lap. These may be interesting to the 
student of animal breeding as illus- 
trations of how men can emasculate 
the brute creation through the applica- 
tion of well understood principles of 
selection, blood concentration and out- 
crossing, but the results are not to my 
mind particularly edifying. 

It is interesting doubtless to know 
that animals that are all body with 
no legs can be produced. It is inter- 

l9l 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

esting, I suppose, to some to know that 
a dog that is all legs and snout, pos- 
sessing no middle, can be bred. It is 
interesting perhaps to see a breed that 
has no nose nor brain, but what is 
found to admire in such freaks is a 
query put by many people possessing 
sound minds in sound bodies. How- 
ever, "de gustibus non est disputan- 
dum." I have no quarrel with those 
who like canine canaries; but as for 
myself give me the virile, normal 
animal that bears some resemblance 
to the primai product of the wilds. 

I love dogs. That's why I don't 
own one. There is no place for them 
in town, and I can spend only a few 
months each year in the country. 
Moreover, you become too attached 
to a good intelligent pup. He grows 
into your affections in real human 
fashion. So much so that when you 
lose him under the wheels of a motor 
or from natural causes you find that 
too strong a hold has been laid upon 
f lol 



A Boy and a Dog 



your sympathies. That's why you 
hear of so many *'dog cases" in the 
country courts. That's what moved 
Senator Vest to say, upon a certain 
memorable occasion: 

Gentlemen of the jury: The best friend a 
man has in this world may turn against him 
and become his enemy. His son or daughter 
that he has reared with loving care may prove 
ungrateful. The people who are prone to 
fall on their knees to do us honor when success 
is with us may be the first to throw the stone 
of malice when failure settles its cloud upon 
our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend 
that a man can have in this selfish world, the 
one that never deserts him, the one that never 
proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. 

Gentlemen of the jury, a man's dog stands 
by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health 
and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold 
ground, where the wintry winds blow and the 
snow drives fierce, if only he may be near his 
master's side. He will kiss the hand that has 
no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and 
sores that come in encounter with the rough- 
ness of the world. He guards the sleep of his 
pauper master as if he were a prince. When 
all other friends desert he remains. When 

till 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, 
he is as constant in his love as the sun in its 
journey through the heavens. If fortune 
drives the master forth an outcast in the world, 
friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks 
no higher privilege than that of accompanying 
to guard against danger, to fight against his 
enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, 
and death takes the master in his embrace and 
his body is laid away in the cold ground, no 
matter if all other friends pursue their way, 
there by his grave-side will the noble dog be 
found, his head between his paws, his eyes 
sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and 
true even in death. 

So what's the use? But, getting 
back to our original proposition, I say 
that the confining of a Collie to the 
dreary monotony of back yards and 
city pavements is putting as great an 
outrage upon Nature as is the caging 
of a scarlet tanager. He may live 
for a while, but his life will be a hollow 
mockery. The enforced repression of 
the wanderlust that inheres In the 
active brain of every true Fox Terrier 
— the bravest creature of his size in 

[12] 



A Boy and a Dog 



the animal world — is as cruel a pro- 
ceeding as the slow murder of a sky- 
lark behind steel wires. Life in each 
case, while it lasts, is indeed a ghastly 
failure. 

The lot of a country-bred man or 
woman trying to be happy between two 
brick walls in a city flat is bad enough. 
But commonly they could escape from 
an imprisonment, often self-imposed, 
if they only would. Frequently they 
hold within their own grasp the key 
that would unlock the bars. Not 
always, to be sure; and when fate 
ordains that they shall never more 
regain touch with the out-of-doors, 
then indeed is the case pathetic beyond 
any parallel to be drawn from the 
brute creation. 

I once knew a boy who at sixteen 
years of age was captured and trans- 
ported from gardens and apple orchards 
to a hall bedroom in a boarding house 
that once stood one city block from 
where the Blackstone now rears its 

[13] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

graceful front. He did not even have 
the melancholy satisfaction of occupy- 
ing it alone. In order that a little 
more might be saved out of a ^lo 
weekly wage, he divided both room 
and rent with a fellow-boarder who 
was in a somewhat similar predica- 
ment. This f. b., by the way, is now 
a man whose name is often seen and 
heard these days in connection with 
important local and national affairs, 
and the old partnership on Michigan 
Avenue is not infrequently recalled 
when these men meet. 

The boy had left behind him In the 
country, among other things, a pony 
and a dog. Naturally there was no 
place for such impedimenta in that 
upper hallway. Now, parting with 
a pony that you have petted and fed 
for years is no joking matter. To- 
gether this particular pair of which I 
speak had explored every roadway for 
miles around. Together they had 
galloped up and down the pastures 

I 14] 



A Boy and a Dog 



where the cattle grazed. Together 
they had waded in the water where 
the creek was forded. They under- 
stood each other perfectly, and you 
don't know just what fate awaits a 
companion like that when you delib- 
erately take your way to the city streets 
and leave him out there to the tender 
mercies of strangers. Maybe they will 
be kind to him. I don't see how they 
could be otherwise if they really know 
him. But maybe he will fall into 
hands that will not appreciate him. 
Maybe he will be abused. So saying 
goodbye to the pony of your youth is 
one of the first real sorrows of your 
life. And yet those words of George 
G. Vest cannot fairly be applied to an 
equine chum, however fond you may 
be of each other. Your pony will not 
be long in adapting himself to the 
individuality of a new master. A 
sufficiency of oats and hay at oppor- 
tune moments will go a long way to- 
wards reconciling your dear old pony 

[IS] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

to any loss he may fancy he has suf- 
fered. For even as the prophet saith: 
"The ox knoweth his owner and the 
ass his master's crib." 

But with your dog it's different. 
You don't really know what grief Is 
until you are a boy ruthlessly dragged 
away for good and all from a Collie 
you have owned. Collies are peculiar 
dogs — shy and suspicious of strangers, 
but tied with hoops of steel to one who 
has their confidence. Unlike your 
roving terriers, all boys do not look 
alike to a Collie. He takes not up 
with the first fellow he may chance 
to meet, no matter how civil be the 
greeting. He does not make friends 
readily. He is chary of his affec- 
tions. He is not a good mixer. With 
him the social instinct is not highly 
developed. He only knows his own 
and his master's own, and in respect 
to that stands ever on the defense, 
and in this sacred service he will do 
or die. 

f i61 



A Boy and a Dog 



But there was no place for him nor 
any other dog in that bedroom there 
three hundred miles away. And for 
the first time the boy now began to 
realize that when he migrated to the 
great city by the lake the curtain was 
falling forever upon an act complete. 
Probably this Collie would have been 
a better work dog, so far as helping in 
the handling of the live stock was con- 
cerned, had the boy not played with 
him so much. This doubtless de- 
tracted from his selling value for 
practical farm purposes. Many dogs 
were infinitely his superior in working 
flocks and herds, but whatever he 
lacked in point of skill at the heels of 
sheep or cattle he more than made up, 
from the boy's standpoint, by the 
splendid intimacy of his constant com- 
panionship and the zest with which 
he entered into various games jointly 
devised. And one sad day the boy 
and dog had their final romp. The 
boy knew it was the end, and his heart 

[17] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

was In his throat, but the dog did not; 
so the weight of the impending blow 
was only felt by one. 

The boy unpacked his little trunk 
a few days later to begin serving an in- 
determinate sentence at office work. 
One morning on the city street he 
passed a Collie on a leash. The day 
was warm and the dog was muzzled. 
The look of hopeless despair the 
country boy detected in that Collie's 
eyes has not yet been forgotten, and 
he vowed then and there that he, 
for one, would never be a party to 
any scheme looking towards the trans- 
fer of any living creature of the open 
to prison pens within a city's walls. 
And he has kept the faith. 

What became of his own abandoned 
dog he never knew, nor desired to know. 
He did not seek bad news where he 
knew there could be none that was 
good, but he always believed that his 
Collie must have died sooner or later 
of something akin to a broken heart. 
[i8] 



A Boy mid a Dog 



Years passed. Engrossed in work 
and saddled with ever-increasing re- 
sponsibilities, the man had little time 
to think of the world beyond the 
gates; but he often dreamed of a cer- 
tain shaggy sorrel pony and a Collie 
racing madly out and back again in 
a game once played where skies were 
blue, and the turf was green, and the 
grass was soft and thick and cool 
beneath bare feet. 





CHAPTER II 
A Brick House with a Past 

Something like twenty-five miles 
from the great city's congested centre, 
if your course has been rightly laid, 
you will come upon what appears to 
be the entrance to a country estate 
of some importance. There are two 
brick piers with gates of iron which 
commonly stand ajar. If you enter 
and are of an observing turn of mind, 
you may note in passing that the 
designer of these gates has used as 
a decoration in working out the de- 
tail of his conception the figure of a 
heart. 

In that field on your left there will 
be corn or oats or meadow — depend- 
ing upon the stage of crop rotation 
registered for that particular season — 

[21] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

and a good, rich, level forty you will 
find it too, though it wants tile. That 
peculiar "humpy" condition of the 
turf in the pasture on your right — 
which is not a part of the property of 
which we speak — reflects even more 
clearly a demand for drainage. 

The driveway will lead you along a 
row of stately maples at the end of 
which the land rises, and if your eyes 
are keen, as you round a sharp curve 
up a slight elevation, you may catch 
a glimpse of what was once an old 
farmhouse, all but hidden in the trees, 
where it is aging peacefully in deep 
seclusion. 

It is a house with a history. Of that 
make no doubt. The only trouble 
is we don't know the history. How- 
ever, that makes no real difference. 
What we do know, and what must 
necessarily have been the situation 
in the years long gone, will enable us 
to contrast without special difiiculty 
its past and present. A great change 

[22l 



A Brick House with a Past 

has come over the scene since one day, 
now more than twenty years ago, a 
party of city business men pulled up 
at the old house to look over the farm, 
of which it was the heart, with a view 
towards purchasing. 

It seems an ordained part of old 
Dame Nature's general scheme to 
obliterate as soon as possible all traces 
of departed activities. Streets and 
rails, no matter what their importance 
as commercial arteries, once abandoned 
are soon claimed by grasses and other 
plants appointed for such tasks. The 
apparently indestructible yields at 
last to the inexorable levers and ful- 
crums with which old Father Time is 
so generously provided. And so we 
find that year by year the vines and 
trees and shrubbery are gripping 
tighter and tighter in their sheltering 
embrace these old brick walls. It is, 
in truth, now so well protected from 
the vulgar public gaze that unless you 
know just where it stands you will 

[23I 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

miss it entirely as you pass. Indeed, 
were it not for the fact that it is 
the subject of an annual overhauling, 
and its interior kept in readiness for 
guests who may not find accommoda- 
tion elsewhere upon the property — of 
which it is now a more or less unne- 
cessary part — the porches, windows, 
roof and floors would in due course 
fall a prey to the operation of the 
natural laws that work unceasingly in 
the physical world. 

With my own hands, some years 
ago, I set some of the roots that now 
supply leafy cover to those walls, and 
for this act I am sure that the spirit 
that dwells within is duly grateful. 
I speak thus because it was long since 
vacated by once happy, frugal and 
industrious tenants, and possesses now 
no regular occupants. I am always 
sensible of some unseen presence in 
such cases. Not that I know or care 
anything particularly about occult 
theories, for they do not specially 

[24] 



A Brick House with a Past 

interest mc; but it pleases my fancy, 
now and then, to set up for my own 
mental stimulation some presiding ge- 
nius as watching ever over old houses 
that have once been the stage of hu- 
man weal or woe. 

You will listen now in vain for 
the voices of the children playing in 
the garden. They have disappeared. 
That is all we know about them. The 
kettle sings no more its song of cheer 
and comfort in what was once the 
kitchen. And, by the way, does any- 
one know of any note within the whole 
range of domestic economy so sug- 
gestive of real creature comfort as the 
busy babble of the vapor as it finds its 
sputtering vent through dancing lid 
or steaming spout? We do not hear 
it often enough in these latter days 
for the best interest of the family 
circle. Homes have been broken up, 
I have no doubt, that might have been 
held together had husband and wife 
been more familiar with the story old, 

[25] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

yet ever new, told by the cosy kettle 
on the evening fire. 

For some time after this farm was 
taken over by its new proprietors, 
meals were occasionally served to 
those whose business took them there 
in the old dining-room as in the time 
of the original builder and subsequent 
owners. And so it chanced that one 
day I sat a-listening to the kettle sing- 
ing to itself as I waited to be served. 
Straightaway I felt myself transported 
back across the flood of years to a 
big, old-fashioned kitchen in a farm 
home far away, where a dear old- 
fashioned mother held her own delight- 
ful sway; and the memories that came 
trooping were of pies and cakes and 
things such as have not since been made 
at all for epicures or kings. But food is 
no longer to be had in this old brick 
house. Its commissary department is 
out of commission, probably forever. 

The electric bulb has of course sup- 
planted the candles and the lamps, 
[26] 



A Brick House with a Past 

and the lanterns that once lighted the 
farmer and his men to the early morn- 
ing work gleam no more in the dark- 
ness that precedes the tardy winter 
dawn. Gone also is the big frame 
barn with its warm stone basement 
where the cattle were housed from the 
cold and storms. Gone are the stalls 
where the farm teams stood to their 
corn and oats, and rested from hard 
labor at the plough. Gone the great 
floor where the implements of a thrifty 
husbandry were safely sheltered. 
Gone the great loft where the hay 
was snugly stowed, and ambitious 
hens once made their nests. 

Where all this once was you will 
now see a handsome terrace and a 
broad flight of steps banked high with 
flowers and shrubbery. What was a 
typical barnyard is now a lawn, with 
a double line of maples down a graveled 
walk; and, chief change of all, in the 
very centre of an orchard that was 
doomed a great Colonial mansion 

[27] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

stands. The apple is indeed a sturdy 
tree, even in our icy northern clime, if 
given chance; and so, out in front, you 
still will find a few brave stragglers of 
a fruitful race that refuse persistently 
to abdicate their place; and with each 
recurring springtime they spread their 
fragrance far and wide, and shower 
pink petals on the turf. 

A transformation absolute, in short, 
has overtaken both homestead and 
outlying fields, and to the whole a 
name that is truly freighted deep with 
history and romance has been assigned. 





CHAPTER III 

" The Heart of Midlothian" 

The first money I ever Invested in 
books of a permanent character went 
for the purchase of a standard Edin- 
burgh edition of the Waverley novels, 
embelHshed with excellently executed 
steel engraved plates, reproductions 
of thoroughly artistic originals. I 
bought them at a time when perhaps 
the price might better have been in- 
vested in something of greater practical 
utility. Nevertheless I coveted this 
particular set of books because I loved 
Scott above all else in literature, and 
I insist emphatically that I love him 
still. There they all are now, filling 
a section in my shelves dearer to me 
than any other in the library. Not 
one volume is missing from its accus- 

[29] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

tomed place. True, they are some- 
what worn. They surely need rebind- 
ing, but I like them best just as they 
are. I am perfectly well aware that 
in setting down these facts I am in the 
eyes of the younger generation writing 
myself into a day that has long since 
passed. Nobody buys Scott nowa- 
days, they tell me. But when I con- 
template contemporary fiction I am 
quite content to be so catalogued, for 
Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward, Amy 
Robsart and Jeanie Deans, Richard- 
of-the-Lion-Heart and the Sultan Sala- 
din, Meg Merillies and Lorna of the 
Fitful Head, Prince Charlie and Rob 
Roy, and all the rest of that incom- 
parable company are as near and dear 
to me still, after the lapse of many years, 
as when the world to me was young. 

Many things have happened since 
that day of the long ago when I ex- 
changed my hard-earned cash for this 
precious set of Scott. Books, pictures, 
souvenirs and gifts, mainly valuable 

[30I 



" The Heart of Midlothian'' 

because of their associations — those 
belongings that make life worth living 
— have since accumulated; but I can- 
not honestly confess that I prize at 
the present time any of my possessions 
higher than the still fascinating vol- 
umes that portray so vividly those 
beloved heroes and heroines of old 
romance. 

He who crosses auld Berwick ^'brig" 
and rounds the hills of Lammermoor 
as he comes upon East Lothian, and 
knows naught of Walter Scott, is in- 
deed quite altogether unprepared for 
understanding and appreciating either 
the North country or its people. Of 
course if you have the golf bug well 
developed you can do with a knowledge 
of "Tam" Morris and St. Andrews. 
I am fond of the ancient and honorable 
Scottish game myself, and once per- 
mitted the lure of the celebrated sea- 
side links to draw me away from certain 
studies in other lines of Scottish activ- 
ity long enough to play nine holes on a 

[31] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

windy day amidst those sand-dunes 
on the German Ocean. But nine such 
holes were quite enough; in fact, some- 
what more than sufficient. "Jack" 
Forrest will freely testify to that. I 
will only remark in passing from an 
unpleasant subject that there is one 
particularly unnecessary natural haz- 
ard there for which I harbor no affec- 
tion whatsoever. I decline to publish 
my card, for the simple reason that 
I do not court the jeers and ribaldry 
of unsympathetic souls. In fact, I 
must concede at the outset that while 
I have some acquaintance with the 
methods underlying the grand farming 
of the Lothians, and of the principles 
governing the production of "prime 
Scots" for the Smithfield market, the 
ways of Scotchmen who can drive a 
golf ball 250 yards, straight down a 
fiercely-bunkered course, are past my 
finding out. 

But did you ever view the rising or 
the setting of the sun from Salisbury 

[32] 



" The Heart of Midlothia7i'''' 

Crags ? If you know Scott's Scotland, 
and have ever been in the ancient 
capital of the North, you may have 
taken Sir Walter's favorite walk at the 
close of day. And if it chanced to be 
mid-June you would not have had so 
very long to wait for the glories of the 
dawn itself, so short are the hours 
of darkness at that season of the year 
in the higher latitudes. 

What scenes of pomp and pageantry, 
what tragedies, what triumphs, have 
not those heights looked down upon! 
The joys and sorrows of a people dur- 
ing centuries of turbulence struggling 
onward, yet ever upward, toward the 
goal to which they have finally at- 
tained. There is the line of the old 
High Street, every foot of it historic, 
from the great castle on the rock to 
Holyrood. In the middle of the old 
Grassmarket a tablet imbedded in the 
pavement still carries the figure of 
a heart — the same heart we saw 
wrought into the iron fabric of the 

[33] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

gates as we entered the roadway a 
little while ago leading up to the old 
brick house. And if you have read 
to any profit the enchanting tales of 
the last great Scottish minstrel, you 
will not require a guide to interpret 
the import of the strange inscription — 
"The Heart of Midlothian"— that 
has challenged the attention of tour- 
ists for several generations past. You 
are standing upon the site of the old 
Tolbooth prison, long since demol- 
ished, but given immortality in the 
realm of letters by the sage of Abbots- 
ford. Here the wayward Effie Deans 
awaited execution, while poor Jeanie 
made the long journey afoot to Lon- 
don to beg for her erring sister a 
pardon from the crown. The world 
has almost canonized as a saint this 
heroine, whose actual prototype was 
brave, truth-loving Helen Walker of 
Dundee. 

Mid-Lothian! The open country 
round about "Edina, Scotia's darling 

[34] 



" The Heart of Midlothian'' 

seat,"* the Athens of the Anglo-Saxon 
world! There stands the queenly city, 
now, as ever, the rock of Scotland's 
hopes, her graceful towers and hoary 
battlements, her halls of learning and 
her classic monuments, bathed in the 
mingled sunshine and the mists that lure 
the purple heather from the distant 
Pentland hills! "None know her but 
to love her." May she endure forever! 
Here in America a new heart in a 
new Midlothian has now been set. It 
is also a form of prison, in its way — 
one that brings a mild form of grief to 
certain unfortunates trapped within 
its walls. But this, our heart, is not 
a gloomy pile of cold gray stones set 
up to mark a district's geographic 
centre. It lies imbedded in soft earth 
and verdure in the midst of "green 

♦The Lothians comprise a division of country in Scotland, on 
the south border on the Firth of Forth, of great extent anciently, 
but in modern times restricted to the counties of Haddington or 
East Lothian, Edinburgh or Mid-Lothian, and Linlithgow or West 
Lothian. When the designation Edinburghshire is used, the words 
"or Mid-Lothian" are added often, Mid-Lothian used alone not 
requiring any auxiliary addition. There is a movement on foot 
to adopt the terms East Lothian for Haddingtonshire, and West 
Lothian for Linlithgowshire, exclusively, so as to establish harmony 
of designation. 

[35] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

fields and running brooks," and the 
only tragedies likely to be enacted in 
it are such as may attach to temporary 
discomfitures in the game of golf. It 
is, in brief, just a simple heart-shaped 
hazard nicely calculated to punish a 
"topped" tee shot on the fourth hole 
of a great playground for tired city folk 
that was once a beautiful farm pre- 
sided over by an old brick house. 

Here have hundreds walked their 
way into health and happiness, and 
into all the joys that go with solid 
friendships and congenial companion- 
ships as they have tramped these allur- 
ing links. And here, too, the name of 
the old "heart" of unhappy memory 
has become invested with a fairer 
fame and atmosphere; let us say, 
with some of the humanizing elements 
that flow from the exercise of the simple 
arts of love and service through the 
employment of which iron bars in 
Scotland were once thrown back at 
the gentle touch of Jeanie Deans. 

[36] 



The Heart of Midlothian''^ 



And so it comes to pass that we have 
here to record the fact that the gates 
whereby we reach this new Midlothian 
swing freely ever to release from bond- 
age the weary wearers of a city's 
chains. Here they receive indeed the 
benediction of blue skies, God's sun- 
light and the open country. It is of 
certain phases of this blessed liberty 
amongst the clover blossoms that I, 
a hardened galley slave, would speak. 





CHAPTER IV 

The Bluegrass Claims Its Own 

The broad porch of the big manor 
house builded by the buyers of the Brick 
House farm, with its great white fluted 
pillars and *' gallery," has a southerly 
exposure. The view is of purely pas- 
toral simplicity, calculated to soothe 
and rest tired nerves and eyes, rather 
than impart any special mental thrills. 

A gentle declivity leads down to 
where a sinuous brook meanders aim- 
lessly through the middle foreground, 
losing itself finally in a belt of timber 
on the left, where the flood waters are 
impounded by a dam. The backwater 
from this has formed a small lagoon 
which serves a triple purpose. First 
of all, it gives golfers a good water 
hazard to play into or over. Secondly, 

[39] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

down in the deep cover of the wood 
near the concrete wall that gives 
permanency to the basin, the small 
boys, who have to be amused some 
way when not engaged as caddies on 
the links, find here entertainment un- 
limited in fishing with pin-hooks for 
elusive crabs or bull-heads. To be 
sure the boys are not supposed to 
cross a dead-line that has been set 
up for their restraint, but what nor- 
mally constituted boy, five miles away 
from his home in town, loitering about 
within a stone's throw of a typical old- 
fashioned swimming hole buried deeply 
in the shadow of the oaks, could resist 
a temptation to break a mere caddie- 
master's ground rule? And so you will 
find them there frequently, with a scout 
commonly watching for the stealthy 
approach of some one in authority bent 
on spoiling all their fun. My own path 
takes me always by this woodland 
pool, but I never could find it in my 
heart to drive these very human little 

[40] 



The Bluegrass Claims Its Own 

chaps away from the mysteries that 
cluster round that spot. 

In the earlier days real muskrats and 
woodchucks were to be seen at rare 
intervals working around that dam. 
They are gone now, but what boy who 
had ever seen them there could ever 
forget it or ever dismiss the idea wholly 
from his mind that they are probably 
in hiding somewhere still, and that by 
waiting and watching patiently enough 
the little furry creatures will sooner or 
later be seen again in their former 
haunts.^ The truth is I haven't the 
heart to drive those boys away from 
this fascinating nook when I see them 
enjoying to the utmost its forbidden 
precincts. On the contrary, I am often 
sorely tempted to stop and join them in 
their explorations or meditations. The 
noisy bluejays are busy in the branches 
overhead, tiny wavelets are breaking 
against the face of the retaining wall, 
unknown forms of life lurk underneath 
the surface, and a rabbit hurries by. 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

Through the treetops a glimpse of an 
azure sky is caught. Here indeed is 
the true heart of Midlothian to be 
found, and at this shrine I often stop 
alone and worship. 

The third purpose served by our 
little lakelet is strictly utilitarian. 
Some day late in the autumn the big 
valve in the dam is opened. The water 
nearly all escapes and soon is on its 
way to the Little Calumet, and thence 
into the bosom of the big lake itself. 
The bed of the lagoon is cleaned, the 
outlet closed, and pure water pumped 
until the reservoir is again bank full. 
It is then left there, deserted by all its 
fair weather devotees, to await the 
coming of the power that shall lock it 
tightly in a solid sheet of ice, which 
later on is duly harvested. 

Returning to the wide veranda and 
resuming our survey of the general 
landscape, beyond the brook an un- 
dulating sea of verdure leads the eye 
away to where a hedgerow marks the 

142] 



The Bluegrass Claims Its 0-ivn 

southern boundary of the property. 
Beyond this — the line of a pubHc 
highway — you catch glimpses of corn 
and oat fields, distant woodlands, and 
little farmsteads nestling among the 
trees. Westward a well equipped and 
privately conducted scientific agricul- 
tural experiment station, operated by 
one of our enthusiastic back-to-the- 
landers, is revealed. Its great water 
tower and the big, hospitable house 
that crowns an elevation in the middle 
foreground unite to make Maple Farm 
a landmark dominating the entire 
landscape In that direction. Guern- 
seys, Chester Whites, fancy poultry, 
silos, alfalfa fields and a hundred other 
objects of Interest to farm folk may 
here be found. Back of this a partly- 
wooded, broken country rolls away 
towards a remote range of hills, behind 
which the setting sun goes down into 
the little valley of the Des Plaines 
River. Originally covered entirely 
with a forest growth, clearings here 

[43] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

and there have introduced the bluegrass 
in those hills, and red barns, modest 
homesteads, dairy cows and duck 
ponds greet the eye of such occasional 
wanderers as find their way into this 
delectable region, which is really pic- 
turesque and as yet more or less primi- 
tive. I have had day dreams of 
Horatian happiness there to be found 
sometime in real retirement on some 
sequestered Sabine farm. 

There was a time when what is now a 
wide expanse of grass was given over 
to the plough, but as a matter of fact 
the soil was never specially adapted 
to successful cropping. The wooded 
knolls that shut away our outlook 
towards the east really constitute the 
first rise of land you meet in traveling 
westerly from the sandy shores of the 
lake some ten miles distant; and the 
stiff rebellious clays of which these 
first ground-swells are mainly com- 
posed give ample evidence of having 
once been the bed of a great bay ex- 

[44] 



The Bluegrass Claims Its Own 

tending up to the higher lands farther 
west that form a natural barrier at this 
point betwixt the little river of the 
plains and the great body of blue water 
rolling restlessly beyond the Calumet. 
Notwithstanding the refractory char- 
acter of the soil upon these gentle 
slopes, the Brick House farm was made 
for many years, through the amelior- 
ating influences of a livestock hus- 
bandry, to produce fine yields of oats 
and occasional good crops of corn. 
But such lands primarily belong to 
bluegrass, and as this fitted in exactly 
with the plans of the new proprietors, it 
was not long after they took possession 
that mowers and rakes replaced plows, 
harrows, cultivators and harvesters 
as the only implements in use. 

The major portion of the property 
spread out before the big, new house 
was set aside, by those who were plan- 
ning this co-operative country home, 
for conversion from waving grain fields 
into a modern golf links, and needless 

[45] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

to say, to those who know the nature 
and habit of the bluegrass, it did not 
stand long upon the order of its com- 
ing. Aided and abetted during the 
drouthy summer months by its old 
friend and ever-faithful ally in such 
work, white clover, so dear to our good 
friends the busy honey bees, the occupa- 
tion of the land which the cereals had so 
recently surrendered was quickly and 
successfully accomplished. And pre- 
sently there was naught but beautiful 
green turf as far as the eye could reach. 
The bluegrass loves best the open 
sun. Still it is quick to take advantage 
of any opening aiforded in our western 
woodlands, and if you are specially 
interested in seeing it at its best — or 
worst, just according as you are judg- 
ing it from the standpoint of an 
agronomist or that of a golfer — and 
chance to be within Midlothian's gates, 
come with me to the edge of the grove 
just under the brow of the hill in front 
of the third teeing ground, almost any 

[46] 



The Bluegrass Claims Its Own 

time from early June to late November, 
and I will show you a matted mass, as 
luxuriant a sod as central Kentucky it- 
self may boast. And speaking of this, 
for the benefit of all who love the sight 
and the touch of a bluegrass sward and 
yet know not the existence of this liter- 
ary gem, let us here interpolate a classic: 

Next in importance to the divine profusion 
of water, light and air, those three physical 
facts which render existence possible, may be 
reckoned the universal beneficence of grass. 
Lying in the sunshine among the buttercups 
and dandelions of May, scarcely higher in 
intelligence than those minute tenants of that 
mimic wilderness, our earliest recollections are 
of grass; and when the fitful fever is ended, 
and the foolish wrangle of the market and 
forum is closed, grass heals over the scar which 
our descent into the bosom of the earth has 
made, and the carpet of the infant becomes 
the blanket of the dead. 

Grass is the forgiveness of Nature — her 
constant benediction. Fields trampled with 
battle, saturated with blood, torn with the 
ruts of cannon, grow green again with grass, 
and carnage is forgotten. Streets abandoned 

[47] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

by traffic become grass-grown, like rural lanes, 
and are obliterated. Forests decay, harvests 
perish, flowers vanish, but grass is immortal. 
Beleagured by the sullen hosts of winter, it 
withdraws into the impregnable fortress of its 
subterranean vitality and emerges upon the 
solicitation of spring. 

Sown by the winds, by wandering birds, 
propagated by the subtle horticulture of the 
elements which are its ministers and servants, 
it softens the rude outlines of the world. It 
invades the solitude of deserts, climbs the 
inaccessible slopes and pinnacles of mountains, 
and modifies the history, character and destiny 
of nations. Unobtrusive and patient, it has 
immortal vigor and aggression. Banished 
from the thoroughfare and fields, it bides its 
time to return, and, when vigilance is relaxed 
or the dynasty has perished, it silently resumes 
the throne from which it has been expelled but 
which it never abdicates. 

It bears no blazonry of bloom to charm the 
senses with fragrance or splendor, but its 
homely hue is more enchanting than the lily 
or the rose. It yields no fruit in earth or air, 
yet should its harvest fail for a single year 
famine would depopulate the world. 

No, those are not enemy trenches 
nor modern military fortifications you 

[48] 



The Bluegrass Claims Its Own 

see as you look out over the great 
central field. They are merely traps, 
pits, bunkers, cops and mounds of 
fifty-seven different formations, set 
to catch the unwary — and sometimes 
the very wary — golfer, and they add 
not only to the picturesqueness of the 
landscape but occasionally to the 
language employed by some of those 
who traverse it. 

I should like to tell you what the 
farmers round about here really think 
of the game that engages the attention 
of. so many of those who frequent the 
Club, to the exclusion of other matters 
of interest, but a fair statement of 
their views I do not think could pass 
the censor. If they were native-born 
American or English, Scotch or even 
French farmers they might and prob- 
ably would stand for it, but as an in- 
tensely practical, hard-wqrking, frugal, 
serious-minded folk of German descent 
they look upon the devotion of i6o 
acres of good grazing to such a silly 

[49] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

thing as golf as little less than an 
economic crime. Think how many 
cabbages those fairways might pro- 
duce! Think of the onions that could 
be grown upon the heavily-fertilized 
and perfectly-irrigated putting greens! 
Count the cows that could be pastured 
upon the grass that runs to seed there 
every summer! 

These Bremen township people, 
however, are not averse to taking what 
they can out of the place. The proper 
upkeep of the links involves the em- 
ployment of many men and teams. 
The property is maintained at about 
the same expenditure of money as a 
city park of like extent. A complete 
water and drainage system is installed. 
Men and horses from the surround- 
ing countryside are frequently requisi- 
tioned by the management. Not 
that there is always quick response; 
for there is not. The rush-time at the 
Club is commonly coincident with pe- 
riods of unusual activity on the farms. 

[so] 



The Bluegrass Claims Its Own 

Corn-planting or cultivating, hay- 
making, the oat harvest or other field 
work at home prevents the average 
farmer-neighbor from selling service or 
power to anyone else. When they do 
work for a Country Club they of course 
charge all the traffic can be made to 
bear; which is natural, of course, and 
all proper enough. What good is a 
Club anyhow if those who deal with it 
as outsiders may not milk it.^ 

And yet with all the sport these same 
thrifty people make of the big and 
beautiful links in their midst, and of 
those who play over them, I note that 
they themselves go in for some little 
recreation now and then. Pitching 
horseshoes at pegs in the ground is 
good fun. I have enjoyed many an 
hour at it myself when my lot was cast 
upon a farm. And it doesn't hurt 
these good German farmers particu- 
larly that I can see to indulge now and 
then in this competitive contest of 
skill. To win requires a steady hand 

l5i] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

as well as a good eye. The only 
objection I enter is that one so seldom 
sees them at it. They would be the 
better for more of that sort of thing, and 
their wives and cows and pigs and geese 
would not suffer either. 

Every hard-working individual re- 
quires relaxation. It doesn't make any 
difference whether he be the owner of 
a farm or factory; whether he be 
wrestling with a working dairy in 
the country or a battery of type-setting 
machines in town. And golf has come 
to be the accepted physical salvation 
of those who are in heavy city harness. 

Not every man whose business holds 
him to the city can afford to buy and 
assume the care of several hundred 
acres of favorably-situated, easily- 
accessible land. And not all of those 
who could afford to indulge themselves 
in this luxury care to take on the added 
responsibilities that are inseparable 
from the attempted operation of an 
individual farm. But nearly every- 

[52] 



The Blue grass Claims Its Own 

body can enjoy the benefits of those 
life-saving stations, now so freely dis- 
tributed around the fringes of all our 
cities, known as Country Clubs. 

Personally I have for years had a 
longing to possess a well-equipped 
farm, where I might busy myself try- 
ing to unravel some of the mysteries 
surrounding the perpetuation and 
modification of animal and plant life. 
I should want good horses, good dogs, 
good cattle, good motors, alfalfa, blue- 
grass and some mellow grain land. 
Also a good library, and a big, old- 
fashioned fireplace. And, above all, 
good friends who would enjoy it with 
me. However, I don't believe in a 
man's trying to ride two or three 
horses at once. I have had one in 
town that has demanded all my 
thought thus far, and so the farm still 
waits until such time as I may turn 
my back upon the city's work forever 
to end my days, as they began, midst 
rural scenes. 

[53] 




CHAPTER V 

Midsummer Night Alarms 

For many years Billy and the 
girls and I had been "doing" the sum- 
mer resorts. Or, rather, the resorts 
had been "doing" us. In the early 
days we had been the rounds of the 
inland lakes. Two weeks was then 
about the limit of the time I could 
afford to spend away from work. We 
slept on hard beds, fought flies and 
mosquitoes, caught a few pickerel and 
pond lilies, had an occasional hay- 
ride, and went back to the city im- 
agining we had had a wonderful time. 
These annual dog-day expeditions were 
gradually extended until we found 
ourselves at length at distant seashore 
or mountain summer places, the dis- 
comforts and expense increasing pro- 

[55] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

portionately with the distance traveled. 
We wound up with a summer in 
Europe. Finally Billy threatened to 
break down under the strain of this sort 
of thing, and we viewed with equal 
alarm the thought of another summer 
in the "stuffy" city house or an outing 
at so-called resorts at home or abroad. 
It was at this juncture that I walked 
one day in the early spring through 
the edge of the Midlothian oaks, and 
that was the beginning of the end of 
one family's vacation troubles. 

I took title to a wooded knoll that 
looked out upon a wide expanse of 
verdure, with nothing to impede the 
sweep of the prevailing southwest 
summer breeze, or mar the beauty of 
the sunset. We let the contract for 
a cottage-bungalow and barn, and 
ninety days later took possession. 
That was the third of August, and this 
is what straightway happened. 

The first night in the country no- 
body could go to sleep; it was so 

[56! 



Midsummer Night Alarms 

desperately still. A harmless little 
screech owl was trilling somewhere in 
the dark recesses of the grove. That 
was all. But it didn't sound a bit like 
the clang of the motorman's bell, nor 
yet like a Klaxon horn. If it had it 
would doubtless have sent us all into 
a sound slumber at once, so readily 
does one accustom his ear-drums even 
to the operations of a boiler factory 
running nights next door. We were 
tired, and had sought the pillows early. 
But first one and then another member 
of the household called out in protest 
against the infinite quiet of the night. 
The katydids had not yet reported. 
Their date here is about the fifteenth 
of August, the month so dear to insects 
of high and low degree. That orches- 
tra, therefore, had not yet commenced 
its rasping rhapsodies. And so the 
hours dragged their weary length 
along, until a white-robed figure pres- 
ently put in a stealthy appearance 
at my bedside, by way of informing 

[57l 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

me in whispers tense that I must come 
with her to the open window and 
listen. There was a burglar prowling 
around somewhere in the yard ! It was 
an old man, she knew, because she 
heard him cough! Now, just how it 
was figured out that our midnight 
intruder was well along in years I 
have never been able to make out. 
But, anyhow, the bronchial trouble, or 
whatever the inciting cause, presently 
induced another cough, which, from 
a one-time intimacy with "the lowing 
herd," I was not long in diagnosing as 
of bovine origin, and emanating from 
neighbor Clark's adjacent pasture. 
So, after an argument more or less 
drawn out, in the course of which my 
alleged knowledge of cows was called 
into point-blank question, I induced 
the flock to settle down again In search 
of slumber. Needless to say that after 
the mere suggestion of a housebreaker 
skulking somewhere in the lilacs, all 
slept with one eye and both ears open, 

[58I 



Midsummer Night Alarms 

and those who thus avariciously look 
for trouble frequently have little diffi- 
culty in finding it — or that which 
serves the same purpose. 

For what seemed an eternity of time 
naught but the ticking of the clock, the 
chirping of crickets, the distant bark- 
ing of a dog or the drowsy call of some 
restless chanticleer on a neighboring 
farm broke the deep silence of this our 
first midsummer night in the depths 
of the real country. When the solitude 
was disturbed, however, it was broken 
properly. Suddenly, and without 
warning of any kind, there was a rush 
and a roar, followed by a desperate 
crash on the floor below! The shock 
upon nerves already over-strained may 
be better imagined than described. 
All hands — or rather feet — hit the 
floor at the same instant. What was 
it? What dreadful thing had hap- 
pened squarely within the cottage 
walls t Probably the burglar had fallen 
headlong over a piece of furniture! 

[59] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

Anyhow, I reasoned to myself, he had 
never intended any such demonstra- 
tion as that, and unless he had broken 
his neck in the fall he had doubtless 
made rapid tracks in the outer dark- 
ness for tall timber. And so I mus- 
tered up courage for a frontal attack 
upon an ambushed enemy. 

Backed by all the females in the 
house — we had no boy to send to 
the front — I made a cautious descent 
into the darkness below, bearing a 
lighted candle. What better mark a 
burglar could desire I am at a loss to 
suggest. The last step was safely 
reached, however. Somewhat to my 
own disappointment I had not yet 
been shot. Moreover, as yet I saw 
nothing to shoot at myself. Every- 
thing was in order, just as we had left 
it on retiring for the night. The 
doors were all closed, and the locks 
had not been sprung. Ditto the win- 
dows. All was mystery. But, let us 
think a moment! Before closing up 
[6ol 



Midsmnvier Night Alarvis 

for the night Billy had carefully drawn 
down all the new and lively-running 
shades. Of that she was certain. But, 
see here! One of these is now up tight 
against the roller at the top of the 
casing! We breathed again. The 
case was clear. At the psychological 
moment, after the household had been 
worked up by the episode of the cough- 
ing cow to a keen sense of impending 
danger, this shade with a powerful 
spring had taken upon itself the re- 
sponsibility of flying up in the dead 
of night at the full limit of its utmost 
speed. I never knew that one of 
these rollers could cause so dire an 
explosion. But in the still watches 
of a noiseless night the drop of a pin 
is sometimes as the fall of a brick. 

A neighbor across the way also had 
some nervous members of his house- 
hold, and proposed some time later 
that it might be a good scheme to put 
a night watchman on the job. As 
it seemed to be a case of *' women and 
[6il 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

children first" I readily acquiesced, 
and a steady-going fellow, with good 
references as to his personal character, 
was duly employed to scout all night 
through the shadows of the surround- 
ing oaks. He was of course duly 
armed, and a sense of safety immedi- 
ately pervaded all the neighborhood. 
Unfortunately we had not taken the 
trouble to get references as to the 
amount of gray matter carried under 
the new watchman's hat. He was a 
serious-minded German, and, as now 
develops, with little sense of humor 
in his mental makeup. 

The last thing we would hear at 
night would be his reassuring tread 
upon the grass, or down the road. He 
did not sleep on the job. That seemed 
obvious. Of course we did not lie 
awake all night to make sure of that 
fact, but about a week after we put 
him on the watch we had proof that 
he did keep going after we were safely 
launched. 

[62] 



Midsummer Night Alarms 

A revolver shot, followed by a 
second and a third, rang out loudly on 
the midnight air not fifty paces distant 
in the border of the wood. Although 
somewhat dazed and startled when 
thus rudely wakened, we thought it 
all over, and concluded that Hans 
had no doubt gallantly routed some 
marauder who was threatening our 
peace and safety. We heard nothing 
further, and, after first congratulating 
ourselves on this proof of our own 
prudence in arranging for protection, 
decided to wait until morning to hear 
the story. The night passed off with 
no further alarm. 

"Well, Hans," I asked next day, 
"what was the trouble last night? 
Did you get your bird.^" 

"Oh, yes," he rejoined, "I got him." 

"You did.? What was it.? Tell me 
all about it." 

"Well, you see, efery night dot owl 
he come into dot tree. He stood there 
looking right at me with both his eyes. 



The Road to Duvibiedykes 

And now I got him." And he grinned 
as he reflected upon what he merely- 
considered convincing evidence of 
good markmanship such as should be 
valued by an appreciative employer. 

I will lay a wager now that this 
fellow hasn't figured out yet why he 
was not retained to watch over our 
slumbers, and has not yet recovered 
his equanimity at being discharged 
upon the spot as an impossible "fat- 
head." 

These experiences of the cow with 
the cough, a window-shade running 
wild in the middle of the night, and a 
watchman with no targets but inno- 
cent owls in the trees, afforded about 
all the evidence necessary to establish 
our complete confidence in our further 
security. So we began then and there 
to laugh at fears, and put on flesh; and 
now we no longer lie awake or get up 
and seek the cause of any disturbance 
whatsoever between the sunset and 
the morn. 

[64] 




CHAPTER VI 

The Coming of the Dawn 

No painting of its type appeals more 
powerfully to my imagination than 
Guido Reni's Aurora strewing flowers 
before the chariot of the sun god. 
The only trouble about it is that it 
is a ceiling painting; but opposite the 
entrance of the Casino Rospigliosi 
just off the Via Quirinale, where this 
great mural triumph may be seen in 
Rome, there is a table upon which you 
will find a hand-mirror in which the 
marvelous coloring may be studied 
with more or less satisfaction. And 
that reminds me of a little story of 
the Sistine Chapel. 

Some years ago Billy and Bess and 
I were in a Baedeker brigade ostensibly 
studying, with the aid of little mirrors 

[65] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

supplied by the custodian, the inspira- 
tions of Michael Angelo on the ceiling 
of that world-famous chamber of the 
Vatican. I was of course deeply im- 
pressed by the majesty of the great 
master's conception of the Creation, 
the Fall from Grace, and the Deluge, 
and turning to call the attention of 
Bess (aet. i6) to the marvelous effect 
produced in certain figures by fore- 
shortening, I saw to my amazement 
that she was apparently taking no 
interest in the proposition whatsoever. 
Just why I should expect a schoolgirl 
in her teens to go into ecstasies over 
these dingy old religious pictures I 
do not know. But, making no allow- 
ances for the difference in our ages 
and point of view, I only saw that 
she was busy primping, with the aid 
of the little papal mirror in her hand, 
and not looking at the ceiling at all. 
Now to me this seemed, if not just 
sacrilegious, a bit frivolous, and I said 
somewhat testily, I fear: 
[66] 



The Coming of the Dawn 



"My dear girl, do you imagine 
I brought you four thousand miles to 
this famous place merely that you 
might adjust your bangs here in these 
Sistine Chapel mirrors?" 

Needless to say, Billy came to her 
rescue, even as Biddy rushes to the 
defense of an assaulted chick, and I 
was duly humbled. I have always be- 
lieved, and believe now, that they were 
both doing the same thing. In fact, 
I will go further and assert it as my 
opinion that fully fifty per cent of the 
female visitors in the chapel that day — 
and probably every other day before 
and since — only need powder puffs, 
furnished by the guides, along with 
the hand mirrors, to convert the Sistine 
Chapel into a popular beauty shop. 

Well, anyhow, to see the Aurora's 
glowing glories you perforce must use 
a mirror. It is the one painting in 
Europe I should like to own and have 
under my own roof, but there is at 
least one reason why that is scarcely a 

[67I 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

feasible proposal. However, I have 
consolation in respect to that. I can 
show you any May morning from 
the casements of Dumbiedykes the 
original of Guido Reni's inspiration. 
It, too, is a ceiling proposition; a 
picture projected first but very faintly 
upon the dark canvas of the waning 
night, but developed across the great 
blue vault with such a subtle turning 
on of lights that for the space of per- 
haps an hour you will be truly spell- 
bound in the grip of the eternal mystery 
that precedes the final dazzling advent 
of Phoebus Apollo himself in his car of 
fire. 

Probably you had rather sleep. 
Well, so had I, as a regular procedure, 
but out at Dumbiedykes we are apt to 
retire not so very long after the feath- 
ered tribes have settled for the night. 
Nine o'clock often finds us in our nest, 
but I have discovered that as the world 
grows older I do not seem to require as 
much sleep as in earlier times. There is 
[68 1 



The Coming of the Dawn 



that brown thrush in the barberry- 
hedge. She turns in every night as soon 
as the darkening shadows begin to fall 
across the lea, and stirs not at all again 
until the sunlight calls her forth to her 
accustomed tasks. I am no thrush. 
I can and would get up frequently w^ith 
the fabled lark if there were any 
around, but the much-touted species 
of song and story does not register at 
Midlothian. And so it sometimes 
happens that I awake long before the 
first gray tones outside have given 
silent notice of the passing of another 
night, only to find that there is no sign 
of life in air or sky but one — the 
crowing of the roosters on the neigh- 
boring farms. 

Theoretically, Chanticleer is sup- 
posed to announce the onset of Aurora 
and the Hours. Practically, he does 
nothing of the kind. Evidently he 
suffers terribly from insomnia. Not 
only that, but he seems to have little 
consideration for the faithful spouses 

I69] 



The Road to Duvihiedykes 

by his side on every hen-roost. In 
brief, the owl of world-wide nocturnal 
celebrity has little on the gallinaceous 
male. Roosters may settle down 
amidst their wives for a time. Pos- 
sibly they may stand it until after the 
midnight hour has struck, but after 
that let any one bird in any old place 
in any community where poultry abide 
send out his challenge, and it's all off 
at once, so far as the further keeping 
of the peace in the henneries of that 
particular neighborhood is concerned. 
I once spent a short vacation at Bon 
Air in the edge of the beautiful little 
city of Augusta, Georgia, and I am 
prepared to assert that nowhere else 
in all the world — so far as my experi- 
ence in two hemispheres extends — are 
there so many roosters working on the 
night shift and overtime as in the sub- 
urbs of that winter capital. Why 
these Augustan cocks kept up their 
clarion calls so lustily and persistently 
I never knew. Possibly there was a 

[70] 



The Coming of the Dawn 



tacit agreement that it was poultry- 
wise, in that particular part of Dixie, 
to have as many sentinels on duty as 
possible through the dark time. May- 
be the rivalry for the honor of heading 
the various establishments in that 
region was for some reason or other 
especially keen. 

I was told by a lady, upon the occa- 
sion of a visit to Belgium some years 
ago, that the women who go to the 
fairs or markets in Flanders to select 
male birds for breeding purposes base 
their choice wholly upon the relative 
strength of lung power — ergo con- 
stitution — as evidenced by the crow- 
ing of the cocks in competition, the 
birds with the most vociferous, long- 
distance voices being universally 
sought. Anyway, if you ever go to 
Augusta and hear one long drawn-out 
call in the far distance, answered first 
by one and then by another bird until 
about fourteen thousand join the 
swelling chorus, the challenge passing 

[71] 



The Road to D^imbiedykes 

completely around the deep amphi- 
theatre of the southern night, I pray 
you do not make the mistake of 
assuming that it is necessarily time to 
get up, for probably it isn't. 

I wish someone would tell me why 
a rooster crows at all. What is his 
idea about it, and what do you suppose 
staid old Biddy there alongside him on 
the roost thinks of his night messages 
down the line.f* I have often thought 
that if I were a hard-working hen, after 
scratching and traveling in barnyard, 
field and garden all day long, making 
my own living and that of a greedy 
brood of youngsters beside — and that 
too with precious little help from the 
grandiose old rooster — I would draw 
the line on this hooray business be- 
tween midnight and the dawn, and 
if sitting within reach would give him 
a peck he would not soon forget. If 
the whole disturbed sisterhood would 
take a hand in such chastisement surely 
the head of the household would be 

I 72] 



The Coming of the Dazvn 



beaten into making terms. From the 
fact that they do not do so I infer that 
the old girls rather like these nocturnes 
in all sorts of keys, or at least become 
indifferent to them, otherwise they 
wouldn't stand for them. I suppose 
that some of "the younger set," the 
pullets, with life still largely in the 
future, may perhaps find sweet music 
in those mighty efforts, but the ma- 
trons of the flock surely must weary of 
them ere daylight comes to cut the 
crowing short. 

Having shown that there is not ne- 
cessarily any real relationship between 
Aurora and the roosters, let us now 
assume that it is say 3 130 a. m. of the 
15th day of May. That dog over 
there on the old Rippet place is barking 
about something concerning which he 
probably knows nothing, but apart 
from that peace reigns. Unseen hands 
have already been busy, however, 
setting the stage for the transformation 
scene about to be enacted. The stars 

[73] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

have lost their sparkle. Through gra- 
dations imperceptible to human sensi- 
bilities, the sable hangings of the night 
are silently shifted westward on the 
wings of the morning breeze. The 
world is still asleep; terrestrial anima- 
tion apparently suspended — except- 
ing always in the henneries. Out of 
steel-gray shadows now emerge faint 
outlines of familiar objects in the land- 
scape. In the east thin shafts of a 
light impalpable pierce the dissolving 
gloom. In the far west a bank of 
purple follows the retreat of night. 
The plaintive cry of a hungry lamb is 
heard, and again that dog at Rippet's! 
I know perfectly well that the trees 
and bushes all around are full of ten- 
ants, all but ready to burst into their 
May-morning song, but as yet no sound 
reveals a single bird. 

I do not have the temerity to wake 
up the rest of the household to ask 
them to study with me the beauty of 
the now onrushing dawn. I once tried 

[74] 



The Coming of the Dawn 



to get Billy out from a closet in which 
she had taken refuge, while I went 
into raptures over the Satanic blazing 
grandeur of a wild electric midnight 
storm. She loves Nature too, but 
not in her (Nature's) wilder moods, nor 
yet at 4:00 A. M. Had I asked that 
she join me in watching the earth 
awake, I should probably have been 
requested, with more or less gracious- 
ness, to look at the spectacle as long as 
I liked myself, but to please allow her 
to get her morning nap, and mail my 
account of the performance later, if I 
liked. And so I sit alone. 

On the stroke of four a crow caws 
down there in the timber by the bridge; 
whereupon a robin from some secret 
place about the lawn indulges in a 
drowsy chirp. Some other morning 
this sleepy note from somewhere under- 
neath the window may precede the 
call of the big black brother in the 
woods. In fact, sometimes one starts 
the ornithological breakfast ball about 

[7Sl 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

these premises, and again the other; 
so I do not undertake to rank the order 
of their rising. I only know that both 
prepare to begin the operations of the 
day before any of their nesting neigh- 
bors have given any outward evidence 
of intent to go to work. It is surprising 
how immediate is the response of the 
other crows and robins to the initial 
caw or chirp. The crows are at once 
alert and scolding vigorously. That 
is, it sounds like scolding. As a matter 
of fact, I presume Mrs. Crow looks 
upon old Jim's voice as the best in the 
community, and what seems to us a 
family row is but the expression of a 
real Corvine affinity. 

Cock Robin does not launch himself 
at once into the cheery roundelay for 
which he is so famous, and yet he does 
not indulge in any extended prelude 
to that finely-finished performance. 
He just tosses off a few disjointed 
fragmentary notes by way of testing 
out his tubes, and then springing for- 

[76] 



The Coming of the Dawn 



ward to the center of some convenient 
stage releases that resounding reveille 
that serves at once as love-song, call 
and challenge. And how quickly all 
his kind join in to swell this morning 
carol to the dawn! Mind you, the 
sun is not yet risen. Robin does not 
wait for that. Neither does the turkey 
gobbler. The "turk" is one of the 
very early birds, and Tom loses no 
time in trying to impress his impor- 
tance upon the farmyard population. 
About the same time that the robins 
wake, your gobbler spills a series of 
those bronchial ebullitions, the like of 
which is not to be located elsewhere In 
the entire realm of vocal acrobatics. 
Just why such really beautiful birds 
as the turkey and the peacock should 
have been condemned to walk the 
earth with such ideas of music in their 
silly heads presents one of the un- 
solvable riddles of creation. 

In a hollow in the oak the flickers 
have a nest. Roused by the robin's 

[17] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

call, a sleepy little head now appears 
in the aperture; eyes blink, and the 
owner settles back out of sight un- 
doubtedly for forty more blessed winks. 
An empty wagon is rumbling down the 
road. Clark's calves are bawling for 
their breakfast. Evidently the farm 
hands are stirring somewhere, for in 
the distance pigs are squealing. I 
know that note. It calls for corn. 
Hello! Again the flicker's face, framed 
in solid oval oak. This time the bird 
is fully roused. She perches for an 
instant in the entrance to the tree's 
interior, yawns, and takes an observa- 
tion. Although I am but a few arm's 
lengths away, she does not know it, 
or if she does gives no sign of interest. 
She looks first up, then down; now side- 
ways, then hops out, clings for a 
moment to the rough tree trunk, then 
wings her way to where she knows a 
good fat grub-worm waits. 

About 4:15 a mocking bird perches 
on the topmost branch of our tallest 

[78] 



The Coming of the Dawn 



tree, and the song service to the rising 
sun is on in earnest. Easily the leader 
of all that company in point of per- 
sistency and sustained sweet flow of 
full-throated melodies, his accom- 
paniment is played in riotous confusion 
by bluejays, cat birds, robins, spar- 
rows, crows and thrushes, and on the 
roof the redheads pound the drums. 
While all this is at its height, across 
the greenery of the fields the first long 
horizontal rays announce the advent 
of his flaming majesty. 

From out the cover of the hedge 
now comes gray Molly Cottontail. 
She stops, looks and listens warily, and 
is on her dainty way. And then a 
strange thing happens. As suddenly 
as it all began the celebration stops. 
By five o'clock all is as silent as before 
the first crow cawed. The singing 
ceases. The choir as an organized 
body has been dismissed. What does 
it mean .^ Breakfast. Everybody busy. 
That's all. 

I 79] 




CHAPTER VII 

Dumb Walls 

Some places fairly name themselves, 
some are christened simply by their 
owners, while still others have their 
titles thrust upon them. It is to this 
latter category that the naming of the 
cottage Dumbiedykes must be referred. 

Away down upon the western shores 
of the Gulf of Mexico the old town of 
Corpus Christi lies in the sands await- 
ing the future. It really has a past 
that is full of interest, but the world 
for the most part hears little and per- 
haps cares less for the ancient settle- 
ment. You are here upon the edge of 
a famous cattle country, but a range 
giving way rapidly now before the 
advance of the man with the hoe and 
the drainage ditch. A little way in 
[8i] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

the north you would strike the famous 
ranch of Charles P. Taft, property of 
the brother of our worthy and most 
outrageously maligned ex-President. 
Far in the south where the Nueces 
enters the great gulf is Santa Gertrudes, 
the 2,000,000 acre ranch under the 
clever management of Robert Kleberg, 
son-in-law of the late proprietor, Cap- 
tain Richard King of ante bellum fame. 
In the west you will not have far to 
drive before you will come to the en- 
trance gate of the Rancho de los 
Laureles, late the property of the Texas 
Land and Cattle Company, and, in the 
hands of that corporation under the 
supervision of a canny Scot, one Cap- 
tain John Todd. 

You are here in a land of magnificent 
distances. This Laureles Ranch has 
in recent years been sold to Mrs. King, 
and added to the royal domain of 
Santa Gertrudes which it adjoined 
along the Nueces boundary; but at the 
time Billy and I visited it some years 
[82] 



Dumb Walls 



ago the Todds were still In control and 
lived upon the ranch in a long, low, 
rambling one-story headquarters situ- 
ated some ten miles from the front 
gate. These great properties under 
fence were really like principalities in 
the old world, presided over with an 
iron hand by the owner or manager, 
with the aid of course of a Roman 
Catholic priest to teach and confess the 
numerous Mexicanos constituting the 
help universally employed indoors and 
out. Quite a town this Laureles at 
the time of our visit, with its as- 
sembled tenant houses, church, stabling 
and the various buildings and corrals 
usually to be seen about the seat of 
power on a modern cattle ranch. 

Here remote from civilization, long 
leagues from any neighbors, surrounded 
as far as eye could reach by the dead 
level reaches of enormous pastures, 
where the coyotes called about the 
house at night, and rattlers were a 
common sight. Captain John Todd, an 

[83I 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

educated Scot, and his wife, Patricia 
Clay, of gentle Border birth, lived in 
comfort and dressed for dinner every 
night. You can't deny a Briton-born 
his "tub" or his dinner coat no matter 
where you may maroon him. He will 
cling to his inherited habits in spite of 
all and any ordinary obstacles. And 
so we spent, once upon a time, a most 
delightful holiday as members of a 
jolly party at this hospitable ranch- 
house of the southeast Texas plains. 
There were long gallops on the ponies, 
or rides in the "ambulance" by day, 
and "doings" every night. Five 
o'clock tea came in between of course. 
But as darkness settled down upon the 
range there came the glow of lamps, the 
radiance of ladies in evening dress, the 
cheery tinkle of cracked ice, good ser- 
vice, a famous dinner, coffee and cigars, 
then music, singing, maybe dancing, 
or charades, and at last "good night" 
out on the porch beneath the brilliant 
southern stars! 

[84] 



Dumb Walls 



It was during one of these Olympian 
evenings that the hostess asked us 
what name, if any, we had chosen for 
the house we had been building in the 
new Midlothian. Upon being advised 
that the little place was nameless yet, 
she said at once: "I have it — 'Dum- 
biedykes'!" and then my Scott came 
back. I had but to recall one of the 
opening scenes in "The Heart of 
Midlothian." And yet I asked, "Why 
'Dumbiedykes'.?" 

"Well," Mrs. Todd replied, "You 
know in Scotch a dyke is a wall. 
Dumbie (pronounced dummy) dykes 
would be dumb or silent walls. You 
will have friends and boon companions 
with you often. Many good times will 
doubtless be enjoyed. Dumb walls 
tell no tales. What name more 
apropos'.^" 

And then and there I was duly made 
to kneel and receive a special christen- 
ing as the "Laird of Dumbiedykes," a 
patent for which title, duly signed and 

[8s] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

decorated with varicolored official- 
looking seals, was duly issued by the 
mistress of Laureles Ranch, and the 
same now hangs upon the said dumb 
walls of Dumbiedykes, where those 
who may question the correctness of 
this weird tale may have all doubts as 
to the regularity of the procedure quite 
removed. 

Scott's old Laird of Dumbiedykes 
possessed one trait only, so far as 
I can figure out, to which I should care 
to lay any claim whatsoever. On his 
deathbed he said, among many other 
things, to "Jock," his son and heir: 

"Jock, when ye hae naething else 
to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; 
it will be growing, Jock, when ye're 
sleeping." 

Many is the tree and shrub I've 
"stuck in" during my time at the 
Brick House farm. You may find 
them on the lawn. One in particular, 
a Rocky Mountain blue spruce, of 
which I am very fond. The spireas 
[86] 



Dumb Walls 



in that circle where the automobiles 
turn and the fancy sumac in the centre; 
the dogwoods and the willows by the 
creek; the Rosa Rugosas along the 
south front of the Mansion House. 
Yes, and they have grown, sure enough, 
while we all have been asleep, and now 
add a little something to the total sum. 





CHAPTER VIII 

The Garden Gate 

I am finishing these notes under the 
shade of one of the oaks that seduced 
me into making the original drive for 
personal liberty and privacy during 
the heated term. Fussing with her 
pansies there is Billy. You who knew 
her just before we found this retreat 
in an out-of-the-way corner of the 
world would not know her now. She 
was always fair enough — at least to 
me — but the fact is she is now flirting 
desperately with two other /V, for 
which two g's — golf and gardening — 
are primarily responsible. 

Since my earliest recollections I have 
ever been fascinated by the first fore- 
casts of spring as evidenced by vegeta- 
tion. I knew where the peonies and 

[89] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

bleeding hearts were making ready 
underneath dead leaves to send up their 
first red signals of a life resumed. 
And as the melting snows started into 
activity the drains and ditches that had 
their sources hidden in the woodlots, 
day after day I followed the flowing 
water far afield. Great journeys have 
I taken upon those occasions, en- 
grossed intensely in the fortunes of 
chips or sticks that I had launched 
upon the rushing currents. Many a 
disaster, too, I have witnessed on those 
flood waters of the early spring among 
the pussy-willows, before the little 
boats could find safe anchorage in some 
quiet pool below the rapids. Aye, 
and I have seen some shipwrecks since, 
in the broader stream of human ex- 
perience; and decidedly more tragic. 
When the color begins to deepen on 
the dogwoods late in March a subtle 
something tells me I shall soon be 
headed down the road to Dumbie- 
dykes. And when we first haul up at 

[90I 



The Garden Gate 



the garden gate the one green thing to 
greet us there each year is the never- 
faiHng Iris. In Greek mythology the 
name was borne by the swift messenger 
whose service rendered Juno was 
identical with that of Mercury to 
Jupiter, and her flight as she did the 
bidding of the goddess queen was 
marked by the rainbow in the heavens. 
Our modern Iris waits not, however, 
the appearance of April showers, but 
rises like the crocus from its bed of 
snow, bringing to a waiting world the 
welcome message that the spring is 
here. Fleur-de-lis, native lily of the 
low-lands, the improved varieties of 
Iris, both Japanese and German, pro- 
duce their feathery plumes of gold 
and purple while yet their tardy sisters 
sleep. 

A few real native bluebells make 
their home underneath the oaks, put- 
ting out their pale blue pinkish blos- 
soms, and departing before the trees 
above them waken from their slumbers. 

[91] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

The lilies of the valley fabricate their 
tiny little cups, and resign themselves 
quickly to the business of rootmaking 
for another season. And while these 
busy early risers are heralding the 
coming of the great procession of the 
floral year, the flowering shrubbery is 
not lagging. 

The hedge of Japan quince can 
always be depended on for its charm- 
ing rose-red blossoms, put out simulta- 
neously with the dark green foliage. 
Lilacs of course. Graceful and sweet 
are the improved white and Persian 
sorts in favored localities, but the old 
vulgaris cares so little where you ask 
it to ply its beneficent vocation, as 
hedge or clump or single specimen, that 
I love it as I do an apple tree for its 
astounding sturdiness. 

Around the doorway we planned to 
have a snowdrift in the month of May. 
There is of course but one way to this 
— the spirea Van Houttei or bridal 
wreath; and in all the world there is 

[92] 



The Garden Gate 



no fairer sight than great banks of this 
at flowering time. As cover for the 
fence along the road we chose syringas 
— the mock-orange of our youth — vari- 
ous varieties, all hardy, vigorous, pure 
white, some highly scented and growing 
to fine stature. Two of these planted 
near the east wall of the cottage have 
reached the eaves above the bedroom 
windows on the second floor, and nod 
a sweet good morning to our guests. 

Along the front we wished a hedge 
that would turn back anything and 
yet be highly ornamental, and we have 
it. I defy any ordinary creature to 
make its way through my Berberis 
Thunbergii in its twelfth year! No 
winter is too cold for it! No summer 
too hot. It is a thing of beauty and a 
joy forever, except to those who may 
court undue familiarity. Fern-like 
foHage from May until October when 
the first frosts paint it like the rose, 
and scarlet berries pendant on each 
thorny branch until forced off in April 

[93] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

by new growth. Wild crabs have we 
also in one corner; and their early 
blossoms bear me back to woodland 
thickets of a long ago. The rose un- 
fortunately does not well in this par- 
ticular soil and environment, but we 
have a small success with baby ram- 
blers and sweet, tall Dorothy Perkins. 
We of course depend upon the 
annuals mainly for the cut flowers, 
which Billy loves to see in every nook 
and corner of the cottage throughout 
the summer. Formerly I used to spade 
the beds and sow the seeds in the open 
about the 25th of April, and some 
famous displays of phlox, petunias, 
zinnias, marigolds and snapdragons 
we have had, but never again! The 
weeding Is as back-breaking a job as 
extractiq,g dandelions from the lawn, 
and the waiting for the flowers seems 
a waste of time. I patronize the man 
with a greenhouse now, and at some 
added cost have earlier blooms and 
fewer aches. 

I94] 



The Garden Gate 



I have a weakness for lilies, and the 
auratum and speciosum have given 
us some truly wondrous flowers. The 
gladiolus and the tuberose are also 
always given place. Likewise asters, 
salvias and cosmos. A patch of golden 
glow is running a race against a bed of 
real red-stemmed Kentucky mint. I 
don't know which spreads the faster 
or which finds greatest favor after 
being picked. This thing I have ob- 
served, however, that the two seem 
to go logically together. 

To tell the truth, the little garden is 
all too small at best, and is shaded too 
by oaks which were once even more 
numerous than now. These have 
grown some since the night that win- 
dow-shade blew up, and the axe has 
been put to the roots of a few con- 
demned. I suppose I dislike as keenly 
as any Druid of old to see a tree felled. 
I worship them, but there is a fine old 
fireplace in the house, and when the 
days are cold or wet the chimney- 

[95] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

breast becomes the altar upon which 
something must be sacrificed to the 
household gods. Our oaks are not 
such stately ones as you may see 
growing out of deeper soils. The black 
ones are already gone, and the gnarled 
limbs of a group of burr oaks speak 
plainly of the struggle they have had 
with their feet standing in a clay as 
hard as iron. 

Upon the plastered outer walls the 
ampelopsis Veitchii spreads its dainty 
tendrils, and now and then yields up 
the ghost unto our savage winters. 
On the north walls it will be all right, 
but a southern exposure encourages it 
too late in the autumn, and rather too 
early in the spring, for its own good. 
On the garage the unkillable woodbine 
flourishes unrestrained. This particu- 
lar Virginia creeper has caught the 
electric light wires in its grasp, and is 
slowly but surely traveling across the 
lawn upon a support which apparently 
is stimulating. 

[96] 



The Garden Gate 



All this affords not only cover for 
ourselves and buildings from the outer 
world, but here too the native song 
birds love to come and build their 
nests and rear their families. I know 
them well, and we get on famously 
together — ■ making common enemy of 
course of that "rat of the air," the 
English sparrow. 

My daily pathway takes me through 
the grove, and here is God's own gar- 
den; wood violets and arbutus, sorrel 
and "shooting stars," crow's-foot and 
spiderworts of royal hue. Here, too, 
May apples and wild strawberries 
bloom; and amidst it all the bluegrass 
encroacheth ever as the underbrush is 
cleared and the oaks depart. 




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CHAPTER IX 

The Tragedy of the Flying Squirrels 

There has always been something 
more or less pathetic to me in the pass- 
ing of big black oaks. They do not 
belong to a long-lived family. A fine 
specimen once stood down near the 
foot-bridge just below the dam, and 
when I first knew it old age was slowly 
but surely creeping over it. The once 
handsome, wide-spreading top was no 
longer proudly carried nor symmetri- 
cal. Dead branches announced impend- 
ing dissolution. Forest sclerosis had 
clearly set in. It was hollow, too, at 
the base, and many a hard-pressed little 
creature of the wild had here found 
safe sanctuary from hot pursuit. It 
was in this aging monarch of the grove 
that I first saw the happy pair of which 

[99] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

I write, and I deal with fact through- 
out, not fiction. 

It was during those first alluring days 
of mystery when, answering the call 
of the south wind and the April 
showers, the violets had forced their 
way through the dead leaves and other 
vegetable detritus, the accumulations 
of the winter in the wood, when all 
that brave company of oaks — white, 
burr and black — had taken on those 
infinitely delicate grays and greens and 
browns that are the despair of artists, 
and mark the early stirring of the 
blood in arboreal arteries. 

The flying squirrel, so-called, was 
once a common object in and about 
our mid-west timber lands, but it had 
been many a long year since I had seen 
one, and we rejoiced accordingly at 
a discovery which added such a dis- 
tinct attraction to the leafy precincts 
through which we walked daily to and 
from the cottage. The crows, jays, 
woodpeckers, cat birds, thrushes, 
[ loo] 



The Tragedy of the Flying Squirrels 

robins and the rabbits were all old 
friends that never failed us, but the 
addition of these two tiny aviators of 
the woods to our regular summer col- 
ony was quite the event of an ever 
memorable season. Whence they came 
nobody really knew. I dubbed them 
Hansel and Gretel. Some mother 
must of course have sent the little 
wanderers from some far country into 
this remnant of a once extensive forest, 
and here they were seeking, like the 
children of the old-time fairy tale, 
nuts, berries and adventure. Here, 
too, like the babes which the genius 
of Humperdinck has immortalized in 
melodious opera, they were destined 
at last to be overcome by the spell 
of an evil genius — one vastly more 
powerful even than that of the fabled 
witch of the Ilsenstein. Indeed, they 
fell into a sleep at last from which they 
have not yet awakened. 

They seemed to have no fixed habita- 
tion as the season progressed, but 
[loi] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

leaped from oak to oak and frolicked 
in the foliage with that joyous abandon 
that knows no fear and has no care. 
The steel of fate had yet to be experi- 
enced. Great is youth and hope and 
innocence! Pure and undefiled the 
happiness that has yet to face the 
future. 

Shelley's "Ode to the Skylark" is 
the loftiest of all hymns to the out- 
of-doors. It exalts the sympathetic 
spirit to the "blue deep's" most im- 
measurable heights. I often fancied as 
I watched the mad antics of the flying 
squirrel that he, too, was in reality 

Like a disbodied joy, 
Whose race is just begun. 

The audacity of this pair was some- 
thing appalling to one unfamiliar with 
their inherited accomplishments. It 
was always a question as to which could 
jump and soar the farther, and they 
preferred ever the leaps from the top- 
most branches of the tallest trees, the 

[ 102 ] 



The Tragedy of the Flying Squirrels 

passages attended by the greatest 
apparent risk, with fine contempt for 
the distance to be traversed. Sure- 
footed and swift as an arrow from the 
cord, they shot back and forth from 
one leafy canopy to another. And so 
the golden summer passed. 

I think they came to know me at 
last quite as intimately as I knew them. 
To my way of thinking all created 
things are more or less akin anyhow. 
The lives of all certainly present too 
many parallels to admit of any other 
hypothesis as to the universal fellow- 
ship. To be sure we count ourselves 
the ruling race. If might makes divine 
right then we surely read clear our 
title to domination, but in our appe- 
tites and habits, our ambitions and 
anxieties, I have seen as yet little 
difference in any fundamental as be- 
tween the different forms of animate 
existence. Man hungers and feeds 
himself like any beast of the field. He 
has thirst which he quenches as does 
[ 103 ] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

the bird at the brim of the brook — 
although not always with the same 
good judgment. That which dear old 
Montaigne sets down as the greatest 
of all human pleasures is duplicated 
all day long in the billing and cooing 
to be seen in any dove-cote. All 
mothers have the same instinctive 
love for their young, and the little life 
of all alike is "rounded by a sleep." 
Beyond this we know naught. To 
be sure we humans have our faith in 
the life beyond. So has " Bob White " 
down there in that lower field, also, 
for aught I know. 

Well, anyhow, we grew to be good 
friends. Just why they came, as fall 
approached, to seek winter quarters 
in the lawn at Dumbiedykes we shall 
never know. Possibly they recog- 
nized me as a brother. I do not know. 
If by any form of telepathy they could 
read my thoughts and sound my feel- 
ings toward them, I am sure that they 
would have known that they would 

[ 104] 



The Tragedy of the Flying Squirrels 

indeed be welcome to occupy an apart- 
ment that we had always for rent for 
furred and feathered folk in a scraggy 
burr oak tree that stands not twenty 
feet from my bedroom window. 

I fancy that the original architects 
of this apartment, which had been 
beautifully worked out, were some of 
the woodpecker people. It was there 
when we acquired the place, and is 
there yet, and it has had many tenants 
in its time. The flickers, yellow ham- 
mers or golden woodpeckers, by which- 
ever term you may please to call them, 
hatch out a noisy brood there every 
spring. Anyhow, when the first heavy 
frosts set the acorns clattering to the 
ground. Hansel and Gretel came along, 
looked over this vacant flat, and liked 
it. At any rate, they took it, and 
moved in, although not without 
strenuous opposition from a somewhat 
surprising and, I apprehend, quite 
unexpected quarter. It was by the 
merest chance that I happened to wit- 

[105] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

ness a pitched battle between a husky 
and decidedly belligerent redheaded 
woodpecker and poor little Hansel, 
From the cottage window opposite I 
watched the fight. Just what object 
Mr. Woodpecker had in trying to 
serve a writ of ejectment upon the 
flying squirrel, I am sure I cannot tell. 
He did not own the place, and to my 
certain knowledge had never even 
asserted a claim to it. No redhead had 
nested there in all the years that I had 
possessed the property. I can only 
attribute his antipathy to the squirrel 
to the fact that probably some ances- 
tral redhead had at no slight cost of 
time and labor made the original 
excavation, and this loyal descendant 
was moved by some Inherited Instinct 
to protect its desecration in his eyes 
by a member of the ancient and not 
always respected family of rodents. 
Be that as It may, he undertook to 
storm the works, and much to my per- 
sonal satisfaction was at length obliged 
f 106I 



The Tragedy of the Flying Squirrels 

to retire discomfited. The valiant 
fighter in the trench had made a suc- 
cessful defense. 

This I am sure was the flying squir- 
rel's first real rough experience. What 
to us appeared a most amusing per- 
formance was to this dainty creature 
a real fight for life. With his back 
to the wall, his head was just visible 
in the aperture in the tree. Mr. Red- 
head, clinging to the rough bark just 
outside, went after the intruder with 
all the force that these marvelous little 
winged carpenters put into their telling 
blows. I fancy the squirrel was quick 
enough to dodge these attacks. He 
could not have withstood even one of 
those vicious jabs with that terrible 
beak, and the brave little fellow not 
only stood his ground inviting this 
punishment, but actually assumed the 
aggressive at times. He was evidently 
a finished boxer, for he led first with 
his left and next with his right with 
such swiftness of attack that he must 
[ 107] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

have landed frequently on the wood- 
pecker's face. Those needle points 
on the ends of his tiny paws were 
admirably calculated to scratch out an 
adversary's eyes. And so, after as 
pretty and as lively and as strange a 
set-to as I have ever witnessed, the 
bird gave up trying to force this Dar- 
danelles, and winged his way back 
Into the depths of the wood whence he 
came, leaving the flying squirrels mas- 
ters of what was to be their winter 
home. And here we bade them fare- 
well when we closed the cottage and 
returned to our quarters in the city. 

Longfellow's description of the "cold 
and cruel winter" fits well the condi- 
tions that now overtook the last of the 
race of flying squirrels in Midlothian 
wood. Heavy snow and ice coated all 
the countryside, the mercury sank to 
almost unprecedented depths and it 
seemed as if the sun would never again 
return to release the northern earth 
from the iron in which it was bound. 
[io8] 



The Tragedy of the Flying Squirrels 

But at last one day, after many weary 
weeks, a breath of spring was wafted 
from the Gulf, and the frost's relent- 
less grip relaxed. The melting ice 
began its long journey to the distant 
sea, and we went out to make our cus- 
tomary preliminary survey of the prem- 
ises to see how everything had endured 
the strain put upon vacant property 
by the rigors of a winter of almost 
unparalleled severity. 

The cottage is carefully boarded up 
each autumn, and upon our arrival this 
particular day in March we found 
everything apparently just as we had 
left it. Inside all was cold and dark. 
There had been no heat in the place of 
course for more than three months, 
and the storm-doors and windows kept 
out every ray of light; so we perforce 
inspected the place w^ith the aid of 
candles. In accordance with our usual 
practice, the large rug in the living- 
room had been rolled up and shunted 
to one side. We had found in previ- 
[109] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

ous years that little Mistress Mousie 
sometimes builded nests for herself 
and family in upholstered furnishings 
or other places that promised to be 
"comfy," from a mouse's point of view, 
and so we unrolled the rug that was 
to reveal a tragedy. Stark and stiff 
in death inside this roll we found the 
poor emaciated little body of one of 
the flying squirrels — starved and 
frozen in a desperate attempt at self- 
preservation in the face of impossible 
conditions; and a half-hour later on 
the lawn, outside, underneath the very 
tree that had been so courageously 
defended in October, we found that 
the melting snows had uncovered the 
body of the mate! 

How the final separation had oc- 
curred, how one had found its way in 
its dire extremity inside the house and 
far into the folds of the rug, are ques- 
tions not to be answered this side of 
flying-squirrel paradise — if there be 
such a place. 

[no] 



The Tragedy of the Flying Squirrels 

The bodies were buried in the garden 
where witch-hazel branches overhang 
their grave, for they were not separated 
at the last; and, as head-gardener at 
Dumbiedykes, I can testify to this 
one fact that, although this all hap- 
pened many years ago, wild violets 
have ever since sprung perennially 
from the ground wherein they sleep. 





CHAPTER X 
Toilers and Idlers of the Shining Hours 

I profess no special knowledge of 
entomology, but at different times I 
have become for short periods inti- 
mately acquainted with certain individ- 
ual specimens of the insect world. A 
honey bee which I inadvertently picked 
up from off a white clover blossom on 
the links one day in August certainly 
gave me a live enough time, for the 
few moments that he lasted. But I 
finally got him just below my knee. 
That was not half so "spooky," how- 
ever, as the incident over on the 
thirteenth hole where after a heavy 
rain, while the surface water still 
soaked the fair green, an ill-fated and 
good-intentioned frog leaped into trou- 
ble up a player's trouser leg. The 

[113] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

reader will of course not infer from 
this that I am classing batrachians as 
insects. Far be it from me thus to 
insult the vastly more intellectual bug 
creation. 

Speaking of bees, one day last sum- 
mer a swarm from oil some neighboring 
farm settled down at Dumbiedykes, 
and, without as much as saying *'By 
your leave," took possession of that 
now famous hole in the burr oak tree, 
where so many birds and the fated 
flying-squirrels had preceded them. 
A brood of golden woodpeckers had 
hatched and gone. Of that I was 
sincerely glad. They were a noisy 
generation, and the chattering of the 
youngsters while the mother sought 
to still their throats and stuff their 
stomachs at last got somewhat on our 
nerves. 

The bees, however, are ideal neigh- 
bors. I always did get on well with 
bees. My father was an enthusiastic 
beeman when I was a lad at home, and 

[114] 



Toilers and Idlers of the Shming Hours 

at the risk of raising questions as to my 
dear old mother's reputation for ve- 
racity I will here put on record the quite 
unbelievable statement which I have 
often heard her make: that as a tiny 
urchin I had one certain summer day 
seated myself in front of the hives, 
where the bees had gathered thickly 
on the outside of their box to escape 
the heat, and played with handfuls of 
them without being stung. I have 
been since, however, not always by 
honey bees. 

And so we really gave the wild bees 
welcome as they entered in the oak, 
and throughout the long midsummer 
days and well into the autumn the 
busy droning of these thrifty little 
workmen added a new element of 
charm to our surroundings. And as 
they gathered from the fields and 
flowers their winter store of sweets, 
their hapless brethren of the idle class — 
grasshoppers, crickets and the rest 
— were squandering the shining hours 

[115] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

with not a thought of coming trouble 
in their tiny brains. 

Most people despise spiders. I do 
not know whether they are more bril- 
liant in achievement than the ant or 
not, but their handiwork is surely more 
spectacular. There is a beautiful big, 
black velvet fellow, for instance, with 
yellow plush trimmings, that spreads 
a net upon the barberry every summer 
that is certainly a geometric gem. 
They say he is poisonous. Well, I 
have no doubt he has been endowed, 
like the rest of us, by Nature with 
some means of providing himself with 
food. The manner of his operation 
is not his fault, any more than is that 
of the robin going into the earth with 
a well-sharpened beak for his legitimate 
prize of war. 

The month of August finds the 
insect tide at its very height, and when 
about the evening of the fifteenth day 
arrives we listen for the first fiddling 
of a katydid. You will always hear 
[ii6] 



Toilers and Idlers of the Shining Hours 

them before you see them. Many 
who have heard them always have 
never yet seen one. They are quietly 
feeding or sleeping during the daylight 
hours, and their pale green garment 
conceals them perfectly as they lounge 
or lunch upon the foliage. The first 
night there is commonly but one Katy 
with leg-development sufficient to en- 
able her to begin operations. The sec- 
ond evening there will be an answering 
call, and about the third night the 
trees and shrubbery will be vibrant 
with the music of these curious har- 
bingers of fall. It is now *'six weeks 
to frost," so the old saying goes. 

A colony of wasps were unwise 
enough to build one summer in a fold 
of an awning that had not been down 
for weeks, and when the rope was 
finally slacked and the poor creatures 
precipitated nest and all to the ground 
below, there was tall hustling on the 
part of the innocent wrecker of their 
home. They were simply inconsol- 

[117] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

able, and literally hung around the 
place of their discomfiture for days, 
evidently in the hope that in some 
way unknown to waspish intellects 
their fragile ruined domicile might be 
restored; this, too, in the face of 
every eifort to dislodge them with the 
garden hose and other discourage- 
ments. They were finally dispersed, 
however, by a resort to the fumes 
of gasoline; so the Germans were not 
the first to introduce a modern form 
of warfare. 

I love the lazy, awkward bumble 
bee. He is not so nervous and pep- 
pery as his smaller brother in the same 
line of business. He nests in the 
ground — hence his name "humble," 
I suppose. He "bumbles" around so 
deliberately, pays so little regard to 
other people, attends so well to his 
own aifairs, and puts up such a supe- 
rior brand of honey, that he is alto- 
gether one of the desirable citizens of 
the entomological world. He does not 
[ii8] 



Toilers and Idlers of the Shining Hours 

lay up his stock in such shape as to 
tempt the cupidity of men, but farm 
boys know that the bag of honey he 
carries home is the very essence of the 
choicest flowers. We used to catch 
and kill them just to rob them of the 
hard-earned fruits of their innocent 
labors. Why do boys have the killing 
lust so highly developed, anyhow? 

Down in Congress the other day, in 
the course of a rather rancorous debate, 
one member, an old hand at the 
business, said that his opponent — 
a new member of the House — re- 
minded him of a "bumble bee" that 
is "always biggest when first hatched." 
I do not know whether that old guards- 
man was up on the natural history of 
the bee or not. I have not cared to 
fumble with their nests myself, so I 
can neither affirm nor deny this state- 
ment in reference to the early life of 
baby bumble. 

Everybody loves a cricket. I can- 
not say much for his gait, or that of 

[119] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

his friend the grasshopper. You never 
know just what the next move is 
going to be. I certainly do not envy 
these ephemeral creatures their mode 
of locomotion. To be compelled to 
wind yourself up, spring the traps that 
unloose your various legs, find yourself 
projected aimlessly somewhere into 
space, and fall all over yourself In the 
landing may seem to them a pleasant 
enough way of going through life, but 
the movement seems to need what a 
dancing teacher might call "smoothing 
out." 

There is something most pathetic 
about the last days of the cricket. 
In some way the grasshoppers and the 
katydids take their leave so quietly 
and so privately that you know little 
or nothing of their final exits. But 
the cheery chirping cricket does not 
make so graceful a goodbye. The 
first frosts dull the edge of his music, 
and give him rheumatism. He be- 
comes a wandering wreck along the 
f 120I 



Toilers and Idlers of the Shining Hours 

sidewalks or in the grass alongside, 
and his last effort at being cheerful is 
such a pitiful little squeak that you 
want to take him in by the fire and 
thaw him out, especially since he has 
been such a welcome visitor around the 
hearth when in better form. 

And, alas! These are not the only 
fragile folk in this heartless old world 
of ours to lose friends and admirers 
after looks and voice have gone. 





CHAPTER XI 

The Rain Upon the Roof 

It was now late in August. For 
weeks there had been practically no 
relief from the burning drouth. Day 
after day the sun had set in copper only 
to rise again in brass. The bluegrass 
looked as if dead beyond recall. The 
leaves were turning brown, and falling 
rapidly. Now and then cloud-banks 
would appear in the distance, and an 
occasional flash and distant thunder- 
peal seemed to signal the beginning of 
the end, but the promise would fail 
to be fulfilled, and the suffering was all 
the greater because of the hope that 
died. 

At length, however, when the thirsty 
earth was in despair, one evening 
there was scattered all along the west- 
[123] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

ern horizon a gorgeous panorama of 
sea and shore and sky and distant 
mountain heights, with great prom- 
ontories projecting into misty gulfs. 
In the offing mystic purple islands 
floated in a golden ocean. For a time 
it seemed impossible to distinguish the 
line of demarcation between the main- 
land of the earth and the vapory 
shadows stretching out and up through 
apparently immeasurable seaward dis- 
tances. And that night came the 
change: first the fiery vanguard of a 
heavy storm; then the settling of a 
steady all-day, all-night rain — the kind 
that makes this great globe of ours 
inhabitable. Have you ever known 
the comfort of watching or listening 
throughout long hours to this blessed 
streaming of the skies upon parched 
fields, dust-laden foliage and shingle 
roofs .? If not, then we have found an- 
other thing denied to you poor city folk. 
On those rare days when a long, 
late-summer drouth is at last being 

[124] 



The Rain Upon the Roof 



thus effectually broken, if you are a 
boy, old or young, and living on a farm, 
you may get a lot of satisfaction out of 
contemplation of the great miracle 
being wrought if you will seek with the 
live stock the shelter of the barn. In 
there somehow you seem to be closer 
to the heart of the things most vitally 
affected. You know that all animal 
and vegetable life has been suffering 
tortures from the intolerable heat. 
Birds and beasts, fields and forests 
alike have felt the strain far more than 
we humans with our various artificial 
devices for ameliorating our own situa- 
tion during such a period. But what 
of those galled and sweating teams, 
those thriftless cattle in bare pastures 
seeking the shelter of some friendly 
tree, and fighting the tormenting flies 
that permit no peace by day or night. ^ 
What of the poultry with uplifted wings 
almost too tired and hot in their 
feather coats to forage for their slack- 
ening food.^ What of that once-fine 

[125] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

field of corn that gave such promise 
at the last full moon — now "fired" 
and on the brink of ruin? What of 
the curling leaves on elm and maple? 

I have indeed vivid recollections of 
a hayloft in an old red barn from the 
door of which we used to watch this 
great event of the final coming of the 
heavy rain, and I can hear still the 
comforting monotony of that steady 
patter on the roof bringing life and 
hope renewed into a languishing world. 
You farm-bred folk know full well, as 
you watch the slow discharging of the 
thick gray clouds, the astounding trans- 
formation now at hand. 

At Dumbiedykes, alas, there is now 
no barn — only a garage. And who 
could stand or sit for hours in an auto- 
mobile stable and welcome with grate- 
ful heart a two-days rain? Nobody, 
of course. There are no friendly eyes 
or ears or muzzles in the stalls to keep 
you company. There is no hay over- 
head. No feed-bins, straw or meal- 
[126] 



The Rain Upon the Roof 



tubs. Just your trusty motor, and 
when it is not going it speaks to you not 
at all. True, purring down the long 
road it has a voice of which you may 
get very fond. Besides it minds not 
drouths, nor heat, nor cold, if you are 
as good to it as to your horse. And 
yet a garage can never be a sure- 
enough old barn, filled with the tenants 
and the products of the fields. 

Once we kept ponies where the big 
machine now stands, but they, like 
their little mistress, have gone now far 
away. A Shetland of uncommon qual- 
ity and wisdom was the one particular 
pet in those days; in fact a frequent 
caller inside the cottage proper, until 
once upon a time he got his pudgy 
stomach wedged in between two closet 
walls, whereupon w^e had something 
of a time extricating him from a real 
predicament. 

The cottage porch is well protected 
from both wind and rain. Here there- 
fore let us sit and watch the dry earth 

I 127 1 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

drink, and listen to the gurgling of the 
water in the spouts, or the dripping 
from the eaves. And if it grows too 
damp at last, there always waits inside 
a certain friend — the back-log. And 
when the day is done, and the scorched 
earth is still demanding more, yet 
more, there is still the comfort of that 
pillow as the rain pours on unceasingly 
through the blackness of the night! 
You are so snug and dry and satisfied. 
The wind is rising now. It shakes a 
cataract upon the roof from oif the 
overhanging branches, and while you 
are on your way to dreamland its deep 
retreating roar through the weeping, 
bending oaks seems an echo of a heavy 
surf upon a stormbeat shore. 

And the fresh beauty of a world re- 
newed that greets the morning sun! 
Who shall paint it.^* 



[128] 




CHAPTER XII 

Fireside Fancies 

With the first advance of the autumn 
we begin to lay the open fire. In 
fact, so fond we are of the blazing logs 
upon the big brick hearth that we take 
advantage of the slightest drop of the 
mercury in the thermometer all season 
through to gather round the chimney- 
breast, and set the flames a-dancing; 
and if the day be wet as well as cool 
outside we have little trouble in making 
ourselves believe that after all life 
is not altogether dependent upon per- 
petual sunshine, even though clear 
skies and balmy airs are usually deemed 
essential to the enjoyment of the 
country. 

It is astonishing how few there are 
in these degenerate days who know 
[129] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

how to lay the foundations for a suc- 
cessful fire. Your modern servant 
knows nothing whatever about back- 
logs and their proper placing. The 
wood is just thrown in regardless quite 
of relative sizes and positions, and the 
kindling as apt as not will be on top. 
The prime object of the open fire is 
good cheer and stimulation. Improp- 
erly begun is never rightly finished. 
The fire hesitates, struggles, never 
really gets a-going, and soon its obvious 
discouragement reflects depression in 
the room. The open fire must be free 
and active. Of course there is nothing 
like good, sound, dry hickory or drift- 
wood to give it zest, but these are 
growing as scarce these days as terra- 
pin, and often time we find ourselves 
trying to make believe we are satisfied 
with some half-decayed old stuff, jollied 
along at frequent intervals with pine 
slabs or the debris of crates and boxes 
from divers sources. However, any 
kind of glow is better than no fire when 

[ 130 1 



Fireside Fancies 



the world Is hung with black without, 
and winds are high and searching. 

Byron says "'tis sweet to hear the 
watch dog's honest bark bay deep- 
mouthed welcome as we draw near 
home," but if the day be cold and the 
frosty air is nipping keenly at your ears 
and finger tips, show me the blue smoke 
rising freely from the chimney top. I 
know what waits within, and when 
the dressing-gown and slippers and the 
rocker are in place the world may 
hang; I care not. For are not my old 
friends there upon the shelves, the old 
gray cat with folded paws asleep there 
by the fire, and Billy knitting? 

For me old friends, old books, old 
vintages, if I may. And yet an old 
friend may be found among people you 
have but recently discovered. Real 
friends are born, not made, and when 
you meet you know without very 
much ado that you were intended for 
friends from the very beginning. You 
have had similar thoughts, similar 

[131] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

tastes, similar aspirations, since you 
were both started on your journey, and 
the joys of a congenial companionship 
that only needed contact for fruition 
are not long in springing into flower. 
It is as if you had always walked to- 
gether. The only trouble is that in a 
lifetime you do not meet many of those 
with whom close friendship would be 
possible. There is such a labyrinth 
of highways and byways to be trav- 
ersed that it seems commonly an 
accident if a real friend happens actu- 
ally to cross over into your own life- 
line and closely parallels your course. 
Fortunate indeed are those thus thrown 
together by the fates charged with the 
handling of our great affairs. 

There is of course a great dliference 
In people In respect to this matter. 
Some are quite satisfied with the froth 
of commonplace acquaintanceship. If 
the veneer of the merely conventional 
happens to match their own they may 
live content In a world that seems to 

[132] 



Fireside Fancies 



their shallow natures filled with most 
congenial people; but those in whom 
the currents that touch the nobler 
things of life run deep and high have 
not often the great good fortune to 
join themselves in spirit with more than 
one or two real friends. We all know 
plenty of people, but how many come 
into our lives with whom a perfect mu- 
tual understanding is possible? The 
rarity of such companionships in actual 
life explains and emphasizes the price- 
less value of the literature of the ages. 
Here at least we may turn and be sure 
of finding thoughts and sentiments 
that confirm our own experiences, or 
give expression to our own ideals. 

I pity the man or woman who is only 
happy and content where the band 
is playing. Possibly this is sympathy 
quite wasted. Possibly those who find 
all they require in life at the "movies" 
or in the whirl of the town have the 
rational view, but there are some who 
do not court constant touch with the 



133 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

passing rush and roar. There are 
some who have certain resources within 
themselves. There are people who 
could spend a blustery week by an 
open fire with only a good book or a 
friend — I use the word in its highest 
interpretation — and not be miserable. 
I have known folk who, if need be, 
would find no hardship whatsoever in 
passing a winter alone in Terra del 
Fuego — that is, if before being thus 
marooned they might be provided, 
say with Shakespeare and Marcus 
Aurelius. If I were to be thus iso- 
lated, however, for any reason from 
so-called civilization, I should wish 
to extend the list to take in first of all 
the Scriptures. I must say I do not 
know which fascinates me most, the 
flowery imagery of the Prophets or the 
moral beauty of the Sermon on the 
Mount. Then, again — queer con- 
ceit, isn't it.? — I think I should ask 
also for my old Montaigne, and if there 
were room in the boat that was to set 

[134] 



Fireside Fancies 



me ashore I should surely ask for 
Thoreau's Walden, and copies of Vir- 
gil, Horace, Wordsworth, *' Bobby" 
Burns, and our own author of Evan- 
geline and Hiawatha. Yes, and I 
would not forget a precious well- 
thumbed Shelley, in which is writ- 
ten this inscription — "With happy 
Christmas greetings from a friend." 
The hand that wrote that line in the 
long ago could not direct the pen with 
such copper-plate exactness now, I 
fancy, but the skylark ode is there, 
the immortal "Hymn to Pan," and 
the "Song of the Faded Violet." 

How fierce and all-consuming are 
those first newly-kindled flames upon 
the hearth! Their primal inspiration 
may be nothing more substantial or 
enduring than pine and paper and a 
tiny match, but how they leap and 
blaze and set the flickering shadows 
dancing! In all this world there Is 
nothing so joyously contagious. All 
the world loves to watch the merry 

[135] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

playing of these first pure spirits of the 
fire, and as they gradually become 
quiescent spectral pictures pass. 

A schoolboy with his freshman 
German. The lesson Schiller's im- 
pressive poem, "Das Lied von der 
Glocke" — the old church bell's story 
of human life from the christening to 
the grave, as seen through centuries 
from the belfry tower. A boy is 
called upon to read and translate. His 
lines conclude: 

O! Dass sie ewig griinen bliebe, 
Die schonste Zeit die jungen Liebe! 

And as the boy finishes and takes his 
seat the old professor seems to dream. 
The boy had said: "A free translation 
of these lines might be 

Would that it might abide forever 

The beauteous springtime of young love. 

"Yes, that may do," says the old 
instructor somewhat wearily, "but 
really there is no such thing as render- 

[136I 



Fireside Fancies 



ing completely in English the full 
beauty of the original." He then 
gave the literal interpretation of the 
lines, and in his voice more than one 
of the boys detected a trace of emotion 
which they would not have guessed 
had place in the old man's breast. 

Within twelve months after this 
little incident one student had deserted 
the college halls forever at the call of 
something in the eyes of a maiden fair. 
She sits there now with him, after the 
lapse of I should not just care to say 
how many years, by the open iire, and 
together they contemplate the slow 
combustion of the logs. A great calm 
has settled down upon the hearth since 
the pine and paper first rushed aloft in 
smoke. The imprisoned sunshine of 
summer days long gone now finds a 
glad release as the friendly fire burns 
on in steady moderation. The "sap" 
is seeping too from out the ends of that 
heart of oak as the heat expands its 
fibres, and an echo of the beating of the 

[ 137] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

early and the later rains Is heard far In 
the distant forest depths. 

They say that only mountaineers 
transplanted from their accustomed 
heights to wear out their lives upon the 
dead levels of the plain ever really die 
of Heimweh. I am sitting later than 
is customary before the smouldering 
embers. The clock Is on the stroke 
of twelve. The glowing coals are 
turning fast to ashes. Where In the 
beginning there was life and light and 
jollity, now all grows cold and gray 
and cheerless. Happily, however, the 
sweet oblivion of sleep Impends, and 
soon the morning light will break. 





CHAPTER XIII 

The Beginnings of Tomorrow 

One born and reared within the 
tropics, who had spent several years in 
the North Atlantic states and Canada, 
once said to me, "The two most beau- 
tiful sights in all this world are the 
New England and St. Lawrence River 
forests after the frost has blended with 
the vivid greens the brilliant yellows, 
browns and scarlets of the maples, 
and — a snowstorm!" 

It is not difficult to understand this 
viewpoint. The eternal sameness of 
the southern atmosphere and land- 
scape must become monotonous. The 
gorgeous October coloring of our east- 
ern hills and the wild exhilaration of 
the snowflakes riding on the winter 
wind must strike one unfamiliar with 

[ 139] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

such scenes with all-compelHng force. 
So let us be thankful that we live in a 
latitude where Nature resets her stage 
so frequently that we do not tire of 
one great act before another is upon us. 
As winter drags on to its close the 
lure of the vernal sun is well-nigh 
irresistible. Most of those who are 
compelled to pass their days in the 
man-built town are then moved by 
some instinct latent in every human 
breast to seek the God-built temples 
of the out-of-doors, but as the spring- 
time leads us forward into golden 
summer days and deep-fruited autumn 
follows on to crown the harvest of the 
year, the killing frosts cut down the 
transient beauties of the fields and 
drive us back again upon ourselves. 
And yet I never quite subscribe to 
the poetic proposition that now 

The melancholy days have come 
The saddest of the year. 

What Is there "melancholy" about 
complete fulfillment of a promise.^ 

I 140] 



The Beginnings of Tomorrow 

What "sad" about the attainment of 
a heart's desire? The bud blossoms, 
spreads its petals, bears the precious 
seed that insures its own sweet per- 
petuity, and goes its way without re- 
gret. The leaves at last drop willingly 
to their rest. There is no struggle. 
All things are working towards a 
destiny that from the beginning has 
been clearly manifest. We may well 
weep over life cut down before its 
time. We may break our hearts over 
things that might have been had cer- 
tain planetary bodies come in conjunc- 
tion at the proper time. But the normal 
closing of careers that have wrought 
that which has from the beginning been 
assigned should bring not sorrow but 
real satisfaction. The devastation of 
a waving wheatfield ere the grain has 
filled affords just cause for lamentation. 
Not so the yellow garniture of the 
heavy-laden sheaves; for Boaz has his 
rich reward, and Ruths may glean as 
the reapers pass. 

[141I 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

The ancients celebrated the *' har- 
vest home," even as we should still. 
From time "whereof the memory of 
man runneth not to the contrary" the 
ripening of the grapes of industry has 
been made the occasion of feasting and 
rejoicing. The *' Good-bye to Sum- 
mer" is not necessarily a song of sad- 
ness. Rather should it be hailed as 
a true hymn of triumph. In the 
apparent end is the eternal promise 
of the future. 

During our last few weeks in the open 
the air takes on a peculiarly exhilarat- 
ing quality. The stars sparkle brighter 
overhead. Through dreamy days the 
blue haze hangs steadily on the horizon. 
The gregarious wild canaries stop with 
us over-night on their long flight to- 
wards the sunny south; and out of the 
darkness overhead there comes that 
truest of all calls of the primeval world 
— the "honk-honk" of wild geese fly- 
ing swiftly through the night on wings 
unwearied. 

[ 142 ] 



The Beginnings of Tomorrow 

And so we gather the ripened seeds 
and clear the ground of the frosted 
flower-stalks in the garden, and pre- 
pare the rose vines against the advent 
of midwinter days. We know that 
the trees and shrubbery have already 
formed the nucleus of the new year's 
foliage; and we turn away with thank- 
ful hearts in certain knowledge of the 
beauty that will rise again. 





CHAPTER XIV 

Back to the Bright Lights 

Around the Auditorium's grim, gray 
tower one bleak December night the 
lake winds howled and whirling snow- 
flakes drifted. City and country alike 
were in the embrace of the first bliz- 
zard of the season. Up and down the 
busy boulevard the myriad lights of 
taxicabs and limousines were gleam- 
ing. 

Farrar's Carmen may be all right, 
but most of those who rolled Loop-w^ards 
on the night of which we speak pre- 
ferred her Madame Butterfly; and all 
were happy when the storm-bound 
city streets outside had been exchanged 
for the atmosphere of spring and cherry 
blossoms with which the stage-setting 
for this opera Is invested. 

[145] 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

The tragedy moved forward to its 
climax. Personally, I have never 
thanked the author of this libretto for 
saddling upon an officer of the United 
States Navy the opprobrium that 
naturally falls to Lieutenant Pinkerton 
in the play. Moreover, the character 
of Butterfly herself is no more Jap- 
anese than Pinkerton is typically 
American. Both would fit more logi- 
cally into Latin rather than northern 
environments. Besides, the psychol- 
ogy of the situation presented is inimical 
to the cultivation of that spirit of 
mutual respect and consideration which 
is so greatly to be desired at this time 
between the nations. The desertion 
of the trusting female Nipponese by 
a man wearing Uncle Sam's uniform, 
even although the fanciful creation of 
the imagination, when publicly paraded 
in grand opera, is not calculated to 
stir the pride of any American, nor 
stimulate the halting friendship of our 
trans-Pacific neighbors. However, this 
[146] 



Back to the Bright Lights 



is not to be an essay on a topic 
purely speculative nor a study in 
comparative ethnology. We can at 
least enjoy Puccini's art and Farrar's, 
and forget international relationships 
in the presence of the working of 
elemental passions. 

Under the magic spell of Campanini's 
wand, great waves of harmony break 
and roll and die away in the remotest 
reaches of the farthest galleries; and 
as the last echoes of a real orchestral 
triumph are lost somewhere amidst 
the heights and depths of the lofty 
walls, I am carried back in spirit to a 
day in the distant past. You who 
have never heard the angels singing 
among the majestic arches of old York 
Minster, as the thousand-tongued 
organ floods that vast cathedral's rich 
interior, have something yet to live 
for. And if you cannot thus indulge 
yourself, at least buy William Winter's 
little book of gems, "Gray Days and 
Gold," and enjoy a poet's inspiration. 

[ 147 1 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

The power of great music over an 
imaginative soul is absolute. 

And now poor Butterfly is standing 
at the window in her all-night vigil. 
The lights have been turned off through- 
out the body of the theatre. Only the 
soft glow reflected from the stage out- 
lines the brilliant audience. The violins 
sing sweetly their plaintive messages. 

If you would enjoy grand opera to 
its utmost, centre not your mind too 
much upon the puppets up in front. 
Concentrate not at all upon the vo- 
calization, however perfect. With 
all your faculties alert listen intently 
rather to the story being told by strings 
and reeds and brass. All else is sec- 
ondary. When I am blind then take 
me still to opera. 

Two thousand human hearts are 
being played upon, even as the artiste 
there in front is sweeping with delicate 
touch the responsive chords of that 
golden harp. A perfume of roses is 
wafted from the boxes. There is glint 
[148] 



Back to the Bright Lights 



of jewels flashing in the semi-darkness. 
You have touch of elbow, mayhap, as 
you sit in hushed expectancy, with 
those who are near and dear. You 
feel the exaltation of the hour. For- 
gotten is the daily grind. Forgotten 
the frozen cabbies of the curb outside, 
and the motor fleet in waiting in the 
snowy midnight. You are soothed or 
saddened, depressed, uplifted, satisfied 
or comforted and your imagination 
stirred just according as your mood, 
your individual capacity, or attending 
circumstances may admit. 

An hour later in the warmth and 
comfort of the library, I viewed 
many things in retrospect. Happy as 
I had surely been under the witchery 
of those high appeals to the finer sen- 
sibilities, my mind kept ever turning 
back from a contemplation of the 
cherry blooms with which poor Cho 
Cho San had decked her little home in 
honor of the coming of her lover to a 
cottage in the wood where the romance 

[ 149] 



The Road to Dumbiedykes 

of real life has a setting on a truly- 
sylvan stage, where the passing of the 
years has left some vacant places 
'round the fireside, where peace and 
happiness and sweet content have had 
a real existence. 

I often wish I were not compelled to 
migrate each October from that little 
nest among the trees. I often wish I 
might remain through snow-bound 
winter days and nights, and so keep 
always close to Nature's heart. But 
my life has not been so ordered by the 
fates. I say farewell to Dumbiedykes 
each autumn only because a call that 
comes from a certain office desk is not 
to be ignored if I am still to pursue 
appointed tasks. And so when North 
winds whirl the dead leaves down the 
road we must prepare to go. Fortu- 
nately this is a compensating world. 
He who seeks may find. Even in the 
bright lights of a great city's manifold 
activities there are fruits and flowers 
worth while. Nights that are "filled 

[ISO] 



Back to the Bright Lights 



with music" may usually be relied upon 
to dissipate the "cares that infest the 
day." I certainly do love the roses and 
the orchids and the song-birds of the 
opera. But after all the coin is coun- 
terfeit. And so at last I come back 
always to the picture of a certain peace 
ful spot where bright old-fashioned 
flowers are waving in the summer air, 
where hollyhocks do rear their decora- 
tive heads, where the delicate fragrance 
of the four-o'clock is spread upon the 
night breeze as the sun goes down, 
where a catbird perches on a honey- 
locust bough and twitters through his 
cheery repertoire as his mate sits on 
the nest beneath him in the hedge. 

I confess the alluring charm of 
Oriental pearls about my lady's neck, 
and of diamonds glittering gaily in the 
bright lights; but on an early morn in 
June there are a million jewels in the 
bluegrass that put all your gems of 
"purest ray serene" to shame; and 
when at dusk the glowing Venus holds 

[151I 



The Road to Dumhiedykes 

her evening court, the highest art of 
Tiflfany pales quickly into insignifi- 
cance. And as for Mary Garden — well, 
there is one thing sure: no note, how- 
ever highly-paid or pitched that ever 
floated o'er the footlights of any stage 
in all this world can bear comparison 
with those that ripple from the bursting 
throat of a joy-mad bobolink or match 
the sweetest sound this earth affords 

— the distant call of a meadow lark 
across green fields. 

And yet there is one note — though 
it is not given to everyone to hear it 

— transcending even these: the note 
your heart finds in the voice of one 
you love. 




PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY 
AND SONS COMPANY AT THE 
LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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